Interesting article over at Fox News about how the U.S. Armed forces are moving to alternative clean energies. Thanks to RKTowner for sending the link in for this.

Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada is powered by the largest solar-power array in the Americas — saving the government an estimated $1 million a year.

Dyess, Minot, and Fairchild Air Force bases purchase 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources of energy.

Airmen and their families have been using biomass fuel at Hill Air Force Base in Utah since 2004, thanks to a 1.3 megawatt landfill gas project. In other words, they are creating gas from the air base’s trash. Complete story at foxnews.com.

Info on Nellis’ solar system.

Story on Hill Air Force Base’s biomass power generation.

Scottsdale’s PetroSun is putting into operation the first Algae to Biodiesel plant in the U.S. They will operate this facility in Rio Honda Texas. The plan is to produce 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million lbs. of biomass per year off a series of saltwater ponds spanning 1,100 acres. The biomass can be used as feed or even fermented and used to make ethanol. For more on this story head over to Gas 2.0.

PetroSun is also working with Optimum biofuels to build a algae biodiesel plant in Arizona near Coolidge. For this plant they plan to plan to generate all their own power, consume no fossil fuels, and be carbon neutral. It’ll be interesting to see how that all pans out. It’d be great if they can achieve all their goals. I don’t know their plans on who they will be selling it to, but hopefully most of it stays in state. From what I hear from other biodiesel producers here there is a huge demand from fleets in Arizona for bio. For more on this click here.

The Navajo nation has partnered up with a Boston company to build one of the country’s largest wind farms. This will be built about 50 miles north of Flagstaff in the Gray Mountain area. When completed the farm should produce around 500 Megawatts which is enough to power 100,000 homes. To achieve this much power around 300 turbines will be installed. For a more in depth article on this head over to azcentral.com.

Here’s short video of a wind turbine being erected. It’s in a totally different environment, but I’d think much of the construction is the same.

While skimming the latest headlines this morning I noticed this column in the Arizona Replublic about algae. It was written about ASU Professor Mark Edwards who had just contributed a post to AzSustainably on Tuesday. The republic also published a quote from Edward’s synopsis of his book off this site. So after the initial excitement of seeing AzSustainably.com’s address in the Republic I read the actual article and it was very interesting.

Basically it was about how Algae could help diversify Arizona’s economy by sparking new types of manufacturing here.

While algae won’t replace major sectors, the organisms could help diversify the economy and spark new kinds of manufacturing. Their byproducts, for example, can be used in jet fuel, medicine, makeup, beer and pet food.

A few local companies already are harvesting algae commercially.

“We have a huge competitive advantage here,” said Edwards, a food-marketing expert, who added that Arizona could have a “green gold rush.”
Full Article at azcentral.com

Mark Edwards, PhD, Arizona State University

Burning 100 million tons of our primary food for fuel is unsustainable and wastes non-renewable resources, especially water. Growing massive amounts of corn represents ecological suicide as it drains trillions of gallons of non-replenishable groundwater, spikes food and fuel prices, decimates food exports and threatens millions with starvation from a food cascade.

Biowar I inflicts costs, casualties and catastrophe in a magnitude far greater than a conventional war. Taxpayers are forced to pay $43 B annually to subsidize erosion and pollution of our air and water for a tiny, 2.4%, replacement of foreign oil. America has insufficient disposable cropland, water or energy to waste on a policy that fails its objectives.

Compared with biofuel alternatives:

• Corn requires more water, land, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides

• Severely pollutes air, soils, rivers, lakes and well-water

• Degrades and erodes soils at the rate of 6 tons per acre

• Grows slowly and produces a low energy biomass yield, 3%

Corn ethanol is not sustainable. It consumes too much water, land, fertilizer and energy. The direct and indirect costs of the ethanol industry are neither sustainable nor sensible for farmers, consumers, taxpayers or food support recipients.

Biowar І offers sustainable alternative to corn ethanol, algae which does not compete for food cropland, uses 0.001 as much water and creates an ecologically positive footprint. Algae is over 30 times more productive than corn and can be made into higher value products such as jet fuel and green diesel. The coproducts from algae, proteins and carbohydrates, may have more value for food, medicines, animal feed and low energy input fertilizers than the oils used for making jet fuel. See more about Biowar І at www.biowar1.com .

• Biowar I Summary and FAQ