October 2006

Green Power Offers Chance to Help the Environment

Clean energy gives members options

Looking for a way to conserve the environment but don’t want to sit around in the dark or cut out your weekly episode of “House?" Buying blocks of Green Power is a great way to help the environment without cutting down on your energy use.

A wind turbine similar to this may generate electricity atop Rocky Mountain near Rome, Georgia if a wind feasibility study shows favorable conditions.

Walton EMC is a member of Green Power EMC, Georgia’s renewable energy program. Under this program, Walton EMC can offer its members green power, environmentally-friendly sources of energy.

Thus far, Green Power EMC has generated more than 82 million kilowatt hours of electricity from two landfill gas-to-electric projects and a low impact hydroelectric project. Walton EMC members have purchased 105,150 kWh of that electricity.

The landfill facilities, Roberts Road landfill in Fayette County and Taylor County landfill near Columbus, operate by converting methane gas burned off by the landfill into useable energy. The hydroelectric generating plant, Tallassee Shoals, is located in Athens.

Several Georgia schools, including Oconee County High School, are generating solar power on their campus with the Sun Power for Schools program. The energy produced by the solar panels, generally placed atop a pole on campus, is used directly by the schools. The OCHS solar array has to date generated 1,655 kWh of energy.

Plans are underway to generate power from Plant Carl, a poultry litter plant near Carnesville, in 2007. Green Power EMC will purchase 20 megawatts of electricity from Plant Carl, which will use a gasification system to convert poultry litter, of which there is an overabundance, into useful electricity.

New sources of green energy are continually being explored. An ongoing wind study is currently being conducted at a standalone wind assessment tower in Floyd County to determine if wind power might be a viable source of green energy.

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