Renewable Energy in North Carolina

Renewable energy is an important subject for individuals and congregations hoping to care for Creation more effectively, and Climate Connection supports the emerging sustainable energy community of entrepreneurs and non-profits while educating faith congregations about renewable options.

North Carolina can generate within its own borders and by its own people the energy it will require in the coming post-fossil fuel economy. Not only economic benefits will result but also cleaner air and water as a reduction in the rate and extent of global climate change. Please join us as together we begin thinking “out of the box” of coal and nuclear and become acquainted with these cleaner technologies. Here is a way to address the invisible causes of injustice that will only grow worse if we fail to observe them.

Renewable sources

Solar Thermal: Absorbing the heat from the sun is the most direct way to use solar energy. Solar thermal gives the greatest return on investment of any renewable energy application. Absorbing the heat from the sun is the most direct way to use solar energy --ask any cat. Solar thermal can be just as enjoyable for humans, and gives the greatest return on investment of any renewable energy application.

Techniques fall into two general categories, passive and active. Passive techniques include letting the sun in to warm a building in winter and blocking it out in summer (passive design), or allowing the sun to heat water in an insulated, glazed tank (passive water heating). Once such a system is built it reqires no intervention or outside power to do its basic work. Active systems use pumps, blowers, or dampers as control devices, which sometimes boost the efficiency of heat absorption. In these, air or another fluid is moved through collectors to absorb heat and move it into a storage device.

Photovoltaics: Photovoltaic cells use light to energize electrons and collect them to provide electricity. Cells are mounted and wired into panels, whose size determines output. Panels can be built from a few miliwatts to over one hundred Watts when in direct sunshine.

Wind: Wind power is the fastest-growing and cheapest source of renewable electricity. U.S. prices have fallen from $0.35/kWh in the mid '80's to $0.03-0.04/kWh at prime wind sites today, using utility-sized turbines. Some of these stand taller than the Statue of Liberty and generate 1.5 Megawatts at normal speed. (Ironically, these largest are made by Enron Wind, a subsidiary "the Crooked E" bought while it was printing its own money and one of the few truly profitable arms of that nearsighted company. General Electric Power Systems has just announced (2/2002) its agreement to buy Enron Wind.) We can foresee a time when U.S. farmers and ranchers supply not only the country's food, but much of its electricity and hydrogen as well.

Hydro: Hydro Power in general is produced from the movement of a mass of water: streams, rising and falling of tides through lunar (and solar) gravitation, wave energy, energy of sea currents. In North Carolina, only stream-based hydro is currently developed.

The distinction of one size designation and another is not exact. Micro-hydro is often defined as an installation producing less than 10kW of electrical energy, small hydro as one producing less than 10 MW. NCSEA encourages installations that can produce power with minimal impact on the stream and its life. Often micro-hydro can divert only part of the water flow and does not require a dam. Small hydro may be installed at an old mill dam that, while not natural, has over dozens of years established itself in the life of the stream. We do not encourage building new dams or flooding valleys -- even though this may be the lesser evil compared to firing up a fossil fuel or nuclear plant.

A hydro system of either size requires a suitable rainfall catchment area, a hydraulic head, a pipe or millrace carrying water to the turbine and a turbine house containing power generation and water regulation equipment. While hydro could be used as mechanical energy to do any number of tasks, it is almost always used to generate electricity

Biomass: All organic matter is biomass, and contains sunlight stored in chemical bonds. The energy released from biomass when it is eaten, burnt, or converted into fuels is called biomass energy. In some cases the biomass is burned in a wood stove or the industrial-sized version of one; in other cases it is digested by bacteria and the methane that is released is burned, for heat or to generate electricity; or vegetable oils can be processed for use in place of diesel fuel.

Information on these forms of renewable energy generation is available at http://www.ncsustainableenergy.org/

Climate Connection regularly offers workshops on renewable energy sources. Check our Events page to see if one is being offered currently in your region of the state.