A success story from Uruguay

[grassfarmer]

Producing 95% of their electricity from renewables, accomplished inside 10 years.

http://iheartintelligence.com/2015/12/23/uruguay-clean-energy/

[farmaholic]

Good for them...

Pretty noble for a temperate climate country with a population of 3.5 million compared to Canada's sub-arctic climate and 10 times the population.

[Hamloc]

A wind turbine on average is 30% efficient, which means that over the period of a year it will produce 30% of it rated output. A 1 megawatt turbine will produce 300 kilowatts on average. To compensate for this you must have alternative generation such as natural gas built into the system as a back up for when the winds don't blow. A good system once complete but requires almost twice the generation capacity to meet requirements, especially in winter.

As for Uruguay no breakdown is given as to what percentage is hydro,wind, solar and biomass. It only mentions that 3 large agroindustrial plants were built running on biofuel. And that a large investment has been made in liquid gas power generation. In Alberta no mention of bio digesters for power generation has been made, lots of solid waste in Alberta.

[bucket]

Not sure why cities in canada don't burn their garbage into electricity instead of using dumps and burying them.

Because it's a throw away society. Almost everything can be made into something. Or used for energy.

Not a tree hugger by any means but locally garbage gets hauled quite a distance when there should be opportunities to convert it locally.

[grassfarmer]

Edmonton is planning or building a biodigester for the city waste.

[freewheat]

Good for Uruguay. We Canadians could probably do as well, if our country had an all time record low of -11, if we had a population of 3 million of which a third lived in one city, and if our area was 1/3 the size of Saskatchewan.

Not meaning to take away from the accomplishment, but really, how hard could it be to be that "green" in a country with the above features?

[foragefarmer]

When it comes to recycling the term "tree hugger" does not apply. It's called common sense and a duty we should all undertake.

[bluefargo]

Bucket
I have had the same thought about cities burning garbage. In fact I have always thought garbage should be sorted at a central location. It would create jobs but would reduce the obscene mountain of waste that we create. Yes it would cost money but we can't continue the way we are going.

[TOM4CWB]

Burying carbon is a perfectly acceptable carbon storage system. Read above article.

Using moisture more effectively, producing more organic matter and sequestering it in our soils... so they are more vegetative/productive; in turn sequestiring more c02... thus building food production to be more efficient...

This should be a major Climate Change initiative on the Canadian prairies.

Producing Nh3 from renewables... should also be an important factor in reducing c02 emissions. This nh3 then being used to grow food through crops like grain... biofuel, etc.

[tweety]

Its clean energy, not strictly renewable. And by clean they mean the dirty stuff produced to make clean burning energy for them is made elsewhere.

[cottonpicken]

Just read a story about the biggest environmental catastrophe happening in California since bp,a natural gas underground storage has been spewing methane and can't be contained and it's been going on for two months. I don't know how's its methane and not natural gas. Sorry no link

[boarderbloke]

cotton, it's getting so bad that they now have the airspace restricted for aircraft over the leak area.

If this would be going on in a "RED STATE", that all the media would've been talking about for 2 months.

[TOM4CWB]

The leak is well publicised in California news
Bombing can't be carbon friendly... Nor hundreds of things done each day.

[grassfarmer]

So when you were googling for reasons why it could work in Uruguay but not here you missed a biggie. We may have 10 times Uruguay's population but we also have 30 times the GDP. Being a big country is also an advantage - more room to put panels! We need to have more of a "can do" than "can't do attitude".

[sumdumguy]

Grass farmer, be reasonable. You are comparing apples and oranges. Go for it, do your part then, give away your internal combustion engines, get off the grid, erect a windmill, put in solar panels, then tell me that's the quality of life you have yearned for. Be happy, spend all your money chasing some BS socialist panacea that's going to get you no where but green, frozen, isolated an miserable.