Some practical proposals

BY JOHN KOLSTAD

St Paul has 70 miles of utility tunnels, mostly in the Jordan Sandstone. Minneapolis also has many miles, plus many natural caverns. This constitutes a vast heating and cooling resource that has largely been ignored. If the existing tunnels were not adequate or available, more could easily be created where needed. This sandstone is so soft that I can remember digging in caves with a spoon and tin can when I was a kid in St. Paul. This layer is 100 to 150 feet thick under our Cities. We are sitting on an energy gold mine.

It is widely known that Geo-thermal is 300 to 400% efficient. That means a user gets three to four times as much energy out of it as they put into it for their home or business. Certainly there are upfront costs, but then the energy is almost free, while the cost of the monopoly coal, gas and oil will continue to rise. With the looming Global Weather change, caused or made worse by burning natural gas and coal, this natural resource should be tapped immediately for heating and cooling in the Metro Area. The ground temperature in this layer is about 48 degrees and some places up to 54 degrees. Doing geo-thermal one house and one building at a time is very inefficient. This is something that should be done in a large area project by the Met Council, the State of Minnesota or the Twin Cities working together.

Germany has pursued a crash program to make every commercial and residential building become a power producer. They have created the equivalent of six Nuke plants from Solar Voltaic in a few years. Now I don’t know what the cost of this NSP project down the Greenway is, but you and I know that the rate payers pay for it, not NSP or its stock holders. Therefore, I propose that NSP use this public money to fund solar voltaic panels on all the commercial buildings and appropriate residential buildings in the area [Lake Street would be a great area to start] and use the power generated to power whatever this power line was to supply. Line loss due to resistance and other problems from electric transmission lines is about 30%. If the electricity is generated closer to the end user this would produce another big savings.

None of the suggestions above are pie in the sky. All these things have already been done and are working, saving money and reducing green house gas emissions. With Fukashima happening in Japan, you can bet that Japan will or is already on a crash program to get away from nukes and they don’t have their own coal or oil, so they will move to solar and geo-thermal. Just watch.

There are plenty of practical solutions to our looming environmental crises. Unfortunately, what is good for the people and the commonwealth is in this case not good for the Corporate Masters. What we need is leadership at all levels. If those there now don’t lead, we need to get them out of the way. The wasteful form of business, banking and energy utilization will never easily give up their position, power and money. We must take it from them, and then do things right.