Swedish Town Uses Waste Instead of Fossil Fuels for Most Public Energy Consumption

The New York Times has this article to brighten the Saturday morning news for everyone who - like this blogger - believes that there is a strong need to use less oil and coal: Link. By converting all of its kitchen waste into biogas and using this gas to heat homes as well as in public transport, the town has not only reduced public consumption of oil and coal to almost zero, it has also managed to slash its energy bills per year by almost half.

Cities with vastly larger populations - and there are many such around the world - could take note of this very successful experiment. More people means more kitchen waste and therefore more raw material to work with in order to extract biogas. Use the Terrabon Link catalytic system to convert sewage into fuel or use an alternative method that extracts gas from sewage, or an algae based system, and there is a strong possibility that far larger cities could be weaned off oil and coal. An ambitious way forward, no doubt, but the good people of Kristianstad started to work on a fossil fuel free future some years ago and successfully got there. It is time the rest of the world learns from their pioneering effort.

Why Is Tamilnadu Looking at Dredging the Cooum but not at Converting the Sewage to Motor Fuel?

Autoblog Green has this piece about a Texas company called Terrabon that is using a process developed by Texas A&M University to convert non food biomass into a gasoline fuel: http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/07/13/green-gasoline-coming-soon-to-a-pump-near-you/ The company has a trial going on to sell this "green gasoline" and it has been used in cars with no conversion required to the engines. The sources from which Autoblog Green got this article are the Houston Chronicle, whose original article on the subject is at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/6522394.html and there is a comment on Green Car Advisor at: http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2009/07/texas-firm-developing-green-gasoline-derived-from-most-organic-materials.html

Yesterday, the Tamilnadu government announced that Deputy Chief Minister M K Stalin would be visiting San Antonio TX to check on their river dredging system - quite pompously, this was referred to as the "San Antonio Model" by the Indian media. My question is simple - San Antonio and Houston are both in Texas. Why on earth isn't whoever is advising Mr Stalin to visit San Antonio to find out how sewage in the COoum could be gotten rid of by being pushed into the sea, arranging for him to meet this company and figure out how to cash in on a huge resource that is available in Chennai? No one expects the Deputy CM to be a technical man who keeps abreast of the latest in technologies all over the world, but surely, the IAS officers and engineering college professors in India who claim to be turning out the best students in that part of the world ought to know better? And what about the Indian media? Don't they have science and technology writers?

Somehow, I am amazed at the sheer lack of knowledge that is almost always exhibited by the Indian bureaucracy, and even more, by the technical educators in that part of the world. Sometimes, like in the case of the now curiously silent N N Sachitanand of DNA India, the "expert" comments on new technology that come out seem to be idiotic to put it mildly. And then, when the question of converting waste into a very valuable resource comes up, again, the Indian bureaucracy can be expected to not do its homework. What a tragedy! Is it any wonder that despite having so many resources, India is still a backward, third-world nation?

Terrabon LLC's website is: http://terrabon.com/