Alternative Energy
Besides moving toward the modest use of wind and solar energy products, we are also going to perfect the generation, storage and use of at least five alternative sources of renewable energy. Each of these alternative sources is derived from current sunlight through the growing and harvesting of plants—which are our planets best solar collectors;1.Active Compost Piles – Generating a modest but continuous amount of heat;
Active Compost Piles – Generating a modest but continuous amount of heat;2.Biogas – Using locally available forms of biomass to generate methane;
Biogas – Using locally available forms of biomass to generate methane;3.Woodgas – Converting wood into flammable gasses through pyrolysis (downdraft gasification);
Woodgas – Converting wood into flammable gasses through pyrolysis (downdraft gasification);4.Biodiesel – Extracting oil from seeds to be used as a diesel-fuel substitute;
Biodiesel – Extracting oil from seeds to be used as a diesel-fuel substitute;5.Alcohol – Distilling various forms of biomass into highly combustible liquid fuel.
Alcohol – Distilling various forms of biomass into highly combustible liquid fuel.Overview
As we hit peak oil, all forms of fossil fuels will climb precipitously in price and value. Learning to generate basic fuels from the plants that we can grow will provide local energy security and become a solid source of income for those who know how to generate it. The first order of business, however, will be to look at the amount of energy we use or need to live a full life. Once we redesign our energy consumption to be in line with sustainable levels, we will be able to produce all of the energy we need from our own local sources of plants. CSC’s Work
CSC and our family of supporters (you?) are going to master the most effective ways of converting biomass (grasses, wood chips, cattail, algae, brush, wood, etc.) into useable, storable energy. Generating our Own Energy
By Bill Wilson – CSC Member
Methane Digester
Downdraft Wood Gasifier
Alcohol Still
Some of These Technologies Will Include:
Methane Digesters
Good slide show about Methane Digesters and Capture:
Downdraft Wood Gasifiers
Alcohol/ethanol Stills
The volume of information on research, experiments and actual prototypes that can be found on the internet is vast. These are solid avenues of pursuit and are the alternative-energy sources of the future. Doing the research and making up functional prototypes will be some of the first projects we undertake as people and resources arrive to join CSC in this work.We invite you to consider joining CSC on this adventure of sustainable living and community.CSC is going to learn to generate basic fuels from “excess” biomass to provide for our local-energy security and to create a reliable source of income for our organization and our local community. We are not talking about using gasoline or diesel fuel to plant crops and turn these crops back into energy. It takes more calories in fuel to raise these crops than we will ever get out of the final crop itself. The conservative numbers we have seen say that it takes 3 calories from gas and oil to produce 1 calorie of harvested grain. By the time the food gets to our plates it is more like 10 calories to 1.We are talking about creating bountiful, natural, wood-laden areas, or food forests, and only pulling out the excess biomass when it becomes available for our use in energy production. Permaculture points the way to speeding up succession (rapid plant growth) that allows us to harvest the greatest amount of sunlight energy in plants at no cost, while at the same time increasing soil health, building top soil, stopping erosion, holding moisture, maintaining hydrological cycles above and below ground, creating cool shade in the summer, providing food and building materials for humans and wildlife, and cleaning the air – to name the basics. Additional Contemplations Regarding Energy
The amount of energy contained in our fossil fuels is quite staggering, really. It is estimated that the number of calories contained in the gasoline from one fill-up of a car (12 gallons) is the equivalent of a person manually working for 3 years…!!! In other words, if you could trade someone 3-years worth of your hard work for 12 gallons of gasoline, how much would you pay for that gasoline? $20,000 - $30,000 - $40,000 or more? That is the true value of these fuels.But because gas and oil have been so inexpensive and easily available over the last century, we have designed heating, cooling and transportation systems that use massive amounts of each, which we have now become very dependent upon. An example of this is the amount of energy we use, converted into Btus (British thermal units), to run the average American household.According to Stephen and Rebekah Hren, authors of The Carbon-Free Home, the number is staggering – it is 100,000,000 Btus. And that’s just the energy we consume! It takes another 72,000,000 Btus to generate and get that 100,000,000 Btus to our homes. How Much Energy do we Use?
Food and Fuel Forests – Not Fuel Agriculture
A BTU (British thermal unit) is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 pound of water (about 16 oz.) 1-degree Fahrenheit in temperature. For example, imagine being in your high-school science lab and pouring a 16 oz. bottle of water into a beaker. Now put a thermometer in the beaker and read the temperature. Let’s say it reads 70 degrees – room temperature. Now light the Bunsen burner next to you and set the flame at about 3 inches. How long would you have to hold the burner under the beaker until the temperature was raised 1-degree Fahrenheit to 71 degrees? And let’s assume that there was a way to insulate the beaker around the sides and below it so that all of the heat from the burner went into the water and did not escape around the What is a BTU?
edges. Would it take 1-second? 5-seconds? 10-seconds? We don’t know the exact answer but most agree that it would take about 3-4 seconds to raise the water temperature 1 degree. That amount of energy, a Bunsen burner running 3-4 seconds, is about 1 BTU. The average American home needs 172 million of these…!!!
Inexpensive and abundant energy sources seem to have numbed us to its true cost and value. We are almost as dependent upon massive amounts of cheap energy to run our culture as we are on oxygen to breathe. If all of the oil, natural gas and coal disappeared tomorrow, our familiar way of living would most certainly come to a grinding halt. That is why the first order of business for all of us in western cultures is to design out the need for massive uses of energy. For example, the PassivHaus home out of Germany (pictured) uses 90% less energy than the average U.S. home. And there are those who say we can do even better than this and design homes that actually produce more energy than they need to build or Designing Out the High Consumption of Energy
operate. And this excess energy could be pumped into the grid to power other needs of our community or culture.
Consider This… The amount of sunlight that intersects the earth in just 24 hours is more energy than all of the oil that has been or ever will be extracted…!!! And we don’t even have to have solar panels to harvest the majority of this sunlight. We can do it with plants…and plants do this conversion at no cost to us. It is what they do. Sunlight + Plants = Abundance and Security
About 70,000,000 years ago, all of the coal, oil and gas that we are presently consuming was above ground and made up the bodies of plants and animals in our massive pre-historic forests and swamps. Is There Enough Energy for Needs?
Using the energy from the sun, the plants that then existed photosynthesized CO2 (carbon dioxide) out of the atmosphere, extracted the carbon molecule (C) for building its tissues, and then released the O2 (Oxygen) back into the atmosphere. This means that the massive amount of energy available to us today in the form of gas, coal and oil all originally came out of thin air (CO2) 70,000,000 years ago.
Why Wait?
Why wait 70,000,000 years to extract this energy again? We can do it in present time, today, by using plants that we put in the ground and can then harvest the sun’s energy in 70 days (grasses & crops) and all the way up to 70 years (trees) and extract that abundant energy for a renewed way of living. And in the process we maintain a carbon neutral cycle, or even better, harvest excess carbon from our atmosphere and store it long term in the soil, thus creating a carbon sink and possibly slowing down or stopping global climate change. Join Us – You are Invited
This is a very exciting way for all of us to learn to live abundantly well, using current sunlight energy. And in the process, we can do our part to leave the planet in better condition than when we arrived on it. This is the work of CSC. 
