Global Warming and Oil: California Leads the Way With Many Silver BB’s Rather Than a Single Silver Bullet

Now We're Talking - Central Valley Thermal Solar-Biofuel Power Plant to Open in Coalinga

By Wu Ming
Surf Putah

One of the criticisms that I often hear about the impractibility of going to renewable energy is that it's too intermittent, and can't produce the steady levels of energy necessary to replace coal, gas (or, as is usually the case in these conversations) nuclear. This is a great example of how that's not necessarily the case, that a bit of creative balance of different sorts of intermittent renewable energies can lead to an overall reliable flow of energy while still getting off fossil fuel:

“Martifer's renewable hybrid projects combine Luz solar thermal trough technology and steam turbines powered by biomass fuel to produce hybrid solar-biofuel renewable electricity. The incorporation of biofuel increases the overall production of renewable power by allowing for around-the-clock production of clean energy, even at night or when sunlight is not at its strongest. Each hybrid project will require 250,000 tons of biofuel annually, to be supplied from a combination of locally-produced agricultural wastes, green wastes and livestock manure. These projects are expected to begin operation in 2011.”

Waste, more often than we realize, is just a misunderstood, underutilized resource. Taking scorching sun and feedlot manure, both of which the Central Valley has in spades (too much of both to be honest, as anyone driving down 5 on a hot summer day can attest), and turning them into clean, carbon-free energy, is a wonderfully elegant solution to a whole bunch of problems.

No one can take the sun or cow manure away from us; they're not going to be dependent on the fluctuations of global commodity markets, and they don't have to be shipped in at great cost. Add wind to this mix, and build it up and down the valley, and we can ease off of a lot of those dirty oil peaker plants (which usually get used when the sun is blazing, in summer, when this plan would be running at peak efficiency) as well as the cleaner but still carbon-emitting natural gas plants.

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