Small Towns Look to Renewables to Reduce Reliance on the Grid [View all]

[kristopher]

Thinking Neutral: Small Towns Look to Renewables to Reduce Reliance on the Grid
By Dave Levitan, Contributor
May 2, 2012

The town of Fowler, Colo., (pop. 1,087) sits in a 150-mile corridor between Pueblo and the Kansas border that boasts about half a million head of cattle. A few years ago, Fowler, like much of the country, faced a difficult economy and rising energy prices. Local government officials decided the cows and the energy weren't so unrelated as they seemed. They started thinking about how cattle – and the other features of the region – might help the town's fortunes.

Soon Fowler had become a standard-bearer for towns looking to become green town by going grid neutral, or producing as much or more power than it uses. They looked at a variety of renewable energy technologies, from putting the 2,400 tons of cow manure that are produced every day in Fowler into an anaerobic digester to make methane gas, to a wind farm to bedecking town buildings and grounds with solar panels.

Town leaders started exploring renewable energy first as a preserving the town coffers, according to Wayne Snider, a former executive with Grumman Aerospace, who was the town’s administrator during this period. The economic development and environmental benefits were an added bonus.

“I think the impetus behind everything at first is to save money,” Snider said in a recent interview. “Then they can see also that there’s potential for creating jobs.”

Fowler and a handful of small green towns ...

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/05/thinking-neutral-small-towns-look-to-renewables-to-reduce-reliance-on-the-grid?cmpid=WindNL-Thursday-May3-2012