In fact, more utilities are thinking of buying the gas outright. Pacific Gas and Electric has agreed to transport gas from a big digester that Microgy, a digester manufacturer, is building in California. Right now Microgy plans to sell the gas on the open market, but Robert Howard, vice president for gas transmission and distribution, said P.G.& E. may buy some gas itself. “This technology provides pipeline-quality gas and reduces carbon emissions, so of course we’re in favor it,” he said.
The environmental boons are many. According to Agstar, digesters are already keeping 66,000 tons of methane from escaping each year into the atmosphere, while generating enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes.
And technologies, some of which have been around for decades, have finally grown more reliable. “There’s been a lot of time and energy spent on making these as effective and efficient as possible, so anaerobic digestion will be a growing business,” said Daniel J. Mannes, vice president of Avondale Partners, a securities research firm that recently initiated coverage of the Environmental Power Corporation, the company in Portsmouth, N.H., that owns Microgy.
Monthly Archives: July 2006
Freedom to Farm: Program Pays $1.3B to People Who Don’t Farm
Dan Morgan, Gilbert Gaul and Sarah Cohen:
Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.
Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual “direct payments,” because years ago the land was used to grow rice.
Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.
Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.
Dinner Potatoes: Fresh from Eau Claire via the Farmer’s Market
Dashing around the Farmer’s Market early Saturday morning, I picked up 5lbs of potatoes. The (late teen/early 20’s?) daughters were moving a bit slow as they organized the vegetables and filled my bag with red potatoes. I inquired about this and one mentioned that they “got in late”, then had to get up at 2 for the drive to Madison. I asked where their early morning journey began? Eau Claire – 178 miles.
On Lake Michigan, A Global Village
As Racine has changed, so have its politics. Once, a ritual antagonism for business was a sure vote-getter among Democrats. But Mr. Becker was elected three years ago with a pro-development message, pledging to trim jobs from the public payroll to free resources to attract new residents and businesses.
Racine’s future, Mr. Becker believes, lies in forging stronger links with the regional economy and global markets. Reinvention can be unnerving, he acknowledges, but he says it is his hometown’s best shot at prosperity and progress. “In the past, Racine was a self-contained economy,” he said. “But that is not an option anymore.”
No local economy truly mirrors the nation. But for Racine and its surrounding suburbs, the last few years have been marked by gradually rising prosperity, in step with the national trend. And the recent history of Racine, like that of the nation as a whole, is also the story of how a community comes to grips with the larger forces of globalization and technological change.
