5 Weird Ways To Generate Renewable Energy

As concern grows for the climate and all eyes are on fossil fuels, the hunt is on for new ways of generating electricity. Traditional renewable energy sources have until now focused on harnessing the power of the sun or the wind or water. But traditions are meant to be broken–and that happens more often than you might think , There is a host of other, lesser-known–and sometimes eccentric–means of generating electricity that bypass fossil fuels, and even the sun, wind and water. 

#1 Trash

There is an abundance of trash in the world, and after all, you don’t need it for anything else anyway. So, as feedstocks go, it ticks all the right boxes: plentiful and free. In fact, plentiful is a bit of an understatement. Each year, every American generates 1,609 pounds of trash. Globally, the World Bank estimates that 2.01 billion metric tons (4.4 trillion pounds) of trash are produced each year. Australia, for one, has so much trash that its landfills will soon be overflowing, with Australians pitching 21 million tons of waste into landfills each year.  

The land down under is taking a new approach to their trash problem by turning their trash into electricity. That’s a win-win from both a trash-reduction aspect and an electricity-generation aspect. The project–a joint venture between UEA-based Masdar and Tribe Infrastructure Group, will produce 29 megawatts of baseload renewable energy, according to Forbes. With this process. This will be enough to power 36,000 homes and displace 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year.   The process of converting trash to energy is cost-intensive, though, but it’s better than having the trash pile into a landfill. Construction on the project is already in full swing, with a projected completion date of 2022. 

#2 Onion Juice

It’s true: onions really can produce electricity, and we’re not just talking about in an lab or that school science project. The process of taking onion juice, through the Advanced Energy Recovery System (AERS), is an anaerobic digester that turns the feedstock into biogas. This biogas is then turned into methane, which is the main component of natural gas.Related: Coronavirus May Cripple Fuel Demand In All Of Asia

The natural gas is then used to generate electricity. Such a system already exists and is being used by a California company, Gills Onions.  Gills spent $9.6 million on the AERS system, and received $2.7 million in incentives from Southern California Gas Company. And it’s paying off: Gills has slashed its own power bills by $700,000 annually, and saves $400,000 by not having to dispose of the onion waste as it used to. It also has cut its CO2 emissions by 30,000 tons per year, according to Fast Company.

#3 Cow Poop

We all have heard the stories of how cows are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. There are nine million dairy cows in the US alone, and a typical dairy cow generates 80 pounds of manure every day. And aside from being used as a fertilizer, this manure also generates methane. This problem is unlikely to go away, as the cows have little alternatives to their poop problem. But a biogas recovery process can take this waste, turn it into gas, and then use it to generate electricity.

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Posted by admin on Feb 11 2020. Filed under News at Now, Renewable energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry