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Updated Tuesday, December 1, 2009 11:03 am TWN, By Pete Harrison and Peter Henderson, Reuters

Sunshine and sewage seen to power our cities of the future

The system is also used in the city of Monsteras, 300 km to the northeast, using waste heat from the local pulp mill, Sodra Cell. As an added benefit, the heat from the subterranean pipelines keeps ice from cycle-paths during the winter.

In the Finnish capital Helsinki, a power company is working with an information technology firm on an underground data center which will channel excess heat from computers into the district heating network, to warm homes.

Biogas, rather than the heated water used in Malmo and Monsteras, may be a way to avoid digging up the streets of bustling and historic capitals like London or Paris to retrofit pipework.

“Biomethane for the grid has such great opportunities, because it uses the existing infrastructure,” said Martin Orrill, head of energy technology and innovation at British Gas.

Biogas is already widely used to generate electricity at sewage works, but putting it into the grid and burning it in homes increases makes it three times as efficient, he added.

Biomethane is already being injected into the gas grid in Germany, France and Austria. And in New York, gas is taken from the Staten Island landfill and injected into the grid.

Most cities will find the answer in a mix.

San Francisco plans to use solar to generate about 5 percent of its power by 2012, mostly from small solar arrays which it is helping to underwrite.

Residents can enter their address into a Web site for an instant estimate on how much money and carbon they could save with solar panels: even new bus stops have solar cells in their red plastic roofs.

The city has just finished a study of small-scale wind turbines, that rev up about the time the sun sets, said Adam Browning, executive director of the Vote Solar Initiative that promotes sun power. “It's kind of like peanut butter and jelly,” he said.

Next it plans a study of wave power, and this month announced a small-scale hydro plant fed by the mountains to the east, the first in a system that potentially could meet about a tenth of city needs.

Carbon emissions are already 5 percent below 1990 levels and headed towards net zero, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, adding the city's eco-friendly citizens are more tolerant of trying new things such as mandatory composting.

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	A group of hybrid Zipcars are shown parked in front of a sign advertising a dry cleaner that bills itself as the city's only non-toxic dry cleaner, in San Francisco, California, Nov. 5. The laundry also uses wooden hangers and reusable garment bags. (Reuters) More Photos (2)


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