Tag Archives: Warren County

Net zero school in Bowling Green KY

Why stop with solar Lowndes High or VHS? Why not have all our elementary and middle schools generate more solar electricity than they use, and change their power bills into profits to help pay for education? A school in Bowling Green, Kentucky is already doing that.

Chuck Mason wrote for bgdailynews.com 22 December 2012, ‘Net-zero’ school pays off,

The district received a check for $37,227.31 this year. The Tennessee Valley Authority paid the school district for electricity it generated. The school district doesn’t have a power plant, per se, like the utility company. But it does have an energy producer, the first “net-zero” school in the nation: Richardsville Elementary School.

The check is tangible evidence that net-zero pays for itself and then some.

“It has exceeded expectations. We’re seeing a savings of millions of dollars in energy costs,” state Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, said of the net-zero schools concept developing across the nation.

This is the same Bowling Green, Kentucky that has fast Internet access. Maybe that’s another reason the Chamber might want to consider comparing Bowling Green and Warren County to here.

-jsq

Whole trees as biomass?

Previously I promised to come back to the subject of whole trees. Allan Ricketts asserted in the VLCIA meeting with concerned citizens on 10 June 2010 that the biomass plant Wiregrass LLC proposed for Valdosta will never burn whole trees because it would be economically unfeasible for it to do so. While I have no doubt that Col. Ricketts is acting on the best information given to him, there are reasons to be sceptical about what will happen in the future. Continue reading