New Technology for developing countries... and perhaps the US.

This is a great new technology, and at a relatively low cost. Hopefully it will spread very quickly in developing countries to help meet its needs for energy, much better for the environment than large fossil fuel plants. It will also be cheaper than building transmission lines and support infrastructure.

This also holds significant opportunity for the US. Many places in the US still use septic systems which could be modified, to capture the methane gas for later use... or immediate use. It would probably be done at a relatively low cost... and make the home energy independent.

Just as we use heating oil, natural gas, petro, coal, etc. We need to explore a wide assortment of technologies... to meet our current and future energy needs. This is just one that should be explored and developed.

CNN.Com/Fortune Magazine 2/27/08

Waste not, want not

Plastics maker Sintex seeks to solve India's energy and sanitation problems in one stroke - with an at-home biogas digester.

By Jeremy Kahn

(Fortune Magazine) -- Sintex Industries, a plastics and textiles manufacturer in Gujarat, India, is betting it can find profit in human waste. Its new biogas digester turns human excrement, cow dung, or kitchen garbage into fuel that can be used for cooking or generating electricity, simultaneously addressing two of India's major needs: energy and sanitation.

Sintex's digester uses bacteria to break down waste into sludge, much like a septic tank. In the process, the bacteria emit gases, mostly methane. But instead of being vented into the air, they are piped into a storage canister.

A one-cubic-meter digester, primed with cow dung to provide bacteria, can convert the waste generated by a four-person family into enough gas to cook all its meals and provide sludge for fertilizer. A model this size costs about $425 but will pay for itself in energy savings in less than two years. That's still a high price for most Indians, even though the government recently agreed to subsidize about a third of the cost for these family-sized units. "We want to create a new industry for portable sanitation in India that's not available now," says S.B. Dangayach, Sintex's managing director.

Government officials plan to end open defecation by 2012 (hundreds of millions of Indians use railroad tracks or other outdoor locales instead of toilets) and say biogas plants are part of the solution. A.R. Shukla, a scientific advisor in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, says India could support 12 million such plants, but only 3.9 million - mostly pricier models big enough to accommodate entire villages - have been installed to date. And last year the government fell far short of its target for new installations.

The future can be glimpsed on a dusty, rutted road in a poor South Delhi neighborhood. Here 1,000 people use an immaculately clean public toilet constructed by a nonprofit foundation, the Sulabh Sanitation Movement. The biogas digester attached to toilets provides cooking gas for a 600-student school and vocational-training program the foundation runs. In the past, nongovernmental organizations like Sulabh were the only ones offering biogas digesters.

But Sintex is hoping cities, real estate developers, building managers, and hospitals will jump at a ready-made way to harness the same energy.

Biogas digesters are just a small fraction of Sintex's business. The company has installed only about 100 of them. But it plans to increase investment and production tenfold in the coming year. That growth potential has helped Sintex stock more than double this past year. Human waste may be a stinky business, but to investors it smells like money.

A Sintex digester can turn manure into fuel for cooking and electricity.

Federal Renewable Power Targets....

This is great news and hopefully the House and Senate will pass this legislation and the President signs it. It would be a landmark piece of legislation.

It is a small target, having the utilities get 15% of their power from renewable sources by 2020. An achievable target. What I find interesting is that no one is saying its a technical impossibility. The argument are all about costs. What I believe we should be asking ourselves is 'what is the cost of not doing this'. In a previous post I pointed out that Europe was ahead of the US on this. They have targets in place now.

We all need to support these targets. ----

Today I posted information on Net Metering to the Altenergystation.com web site. Net Metering are state policies on how consumers and businesses can add their excess renewable energy generation into the power grid. Consumer electric generation can help the utility companies achieve these achievable targets.

Renewable power hits your wallet

Most experts say utility bills will go up, but not by much, if a provision in the House energy bill becomes law.

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

August 23 2007: 1:22 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If a bill that recently passed the House of Representatives becomes law, soon every American would have to pay a little extra for renewable power each month in their utility bill.

The house bill would require most utilities to get 15 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2020.

Special Reportfull coverage

Tapping the brakes on gas demand Oil up, stays under $70 Why Gulf storms drive traders crazy Europeans at the gate

Video More video CNNMoney's Steve Hargreaves sits down with Philips North America CEO, Paul Zeven, to discuss how the company plans to help reduce energy use worldwide, by simply changing a light bulb. Play video

Anecdotal evidence from one utility says some Americans, about 20 percent, are willing to pay about 8 percent more for this power. Yet when given the option, only about 5 percent of people actually sign up.

So are people in for a big shock if the bill becomes law? The answer varies depending on who's asked.

"We're very concerned about the rate impact our customers are going to see when this mandate hits them in the pocket book," said Stan Wise, a commissioner with the Georgia Public Utilities Commission.

Europeans at the gate

But like most experts in the energy field, he couldn't put a dollar amount on what the House bill might cost consumers if it became law.

Obviously, the cost to consumers will vary depending on the abundance of renewable resources in each region.

Wise, like many commissioners from Southeastern states, opposes a federal renewable requirement on the grounds that it unfairly hits Southeastern states, which he says do not have an abundance of wind resources. Wind is one of the cheapest ways of generating large amounts of renewable power.

But proponents of the bill, who argue its needed to foster investment in renewable power and move the country away from a reliance on fossil fuels, say the Southeast could buy the power from other areas, or simply pay a fee to subsidize renewable power in other regions, thereby "offsetting" their own emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas.

About half the states currently have a law requiring the purchase of renewable power, and North Carolina's may provide some insight on just how much it's expected to cost. The state recently required its utilities to get 12.5 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2021, a less ambitious plan than the one offered in the House.

North Carolina's law also caps the amount that customers can be charged for the renewable power. In 2008, the cap is $10 per year, increasing to $34 per year by 2015.

On an $80 a month electric bill, the average in the state, that's about a 3.5 percent increase by 2015.

"As a percentage of their bill, it's not a big hit," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy (Charts, Fortune 500), the state's big utility. Still, whether the state can achieve even its modest goal with such a small rate increase is yet to be seen.

Others in the industry think a renewable power law will actually decrease prices in the long run.

Hitting the House's 15 percent by 2020 proposal will require a nationwide investment of $134 billion, according to a recent study by the energy consultants Wood Mackenzie.

But renewable power would take some of the pressure off the demand for natural gas, currently used to generate about 20 percent of the nation's power and eyed as a big source for future generation needs.

The reduced demand for natural gas should lower its price, and Mackenzie estimates the savings could be as much as $240 billion by 2026.

"Over the long run, there is a net benefit to it," said William Durbin, head of global gas and power research at Mackenzie.

In the short run, Durbin said the up front investment to build the renewable power would cost consumers.

He couldn't say how much more people could expect to pay, but said it's likely to be closer to 5 or 10 percent rather than, say, 50 percent.

Others don't agree with the Mackenzie study.

"I think [the bill] would increase the cost," said Michael Allman, president of Sempra Generation, although he said there were too many other variables to predict exactly by how much.

Sempra Generation, a unit of California-based Sempra Energy (Charts, Fortune 500), runs four natural gas power plants in the Southwest.

Allman's argument implies that if natural gas prices really did spike, people would build more renewable capacity without a mandate from the federal government.

"When you constrain something, it has never been good," he said.

The House bill is set to be conferenced this fall with a Senate version, where a renewable energy mandate failed earlier this year.