We here at the Stranded Wind Initiative have recently taken up the cause of Freedom Fertilizer, an attempt to turn our theories on wind driven ammonia production into an actual funded business in northwest Iowa.
We always knew we could take the natural gas out of the fertilizer and completely remove the need for diesel from the farm production environment, but earlier today one of our technical people came back with this gem:
Also, we need a user for the 23 MBtu/hr of "low grade" heat, at least for the cold parts of the year. My choice is a greenhouse for hydroponic red and yellow peppers or pricey and fast growing lettuce - this also uses CO2 from the local EtOH facility. The high CO2 environment also eliminates the need for most or all pesticides, so these can be labeled as "organic hydroponic", and fetch more money. Such products should be quite competitive in the Chicago, Minneapolis and Milwaukee area, and will up the employment by about 200 people. Most large greenhouses have huge heating bills, which just ruin the economics. Other ideas for this heat....?
Here is the basic scenario that lead to this eye popping two hundred additional green collar jobs which we only just comprehended.
We have an ethanol plant in the region that is a few miles from a very nice wind farm location that is about to be developed. The wind farm has about two hundred megawatts capacity. Two hundred megawatts times the capacity factor here in northwest Iowa means it'll produce about sixty megawatts a year of electricity, and that is enough to produce 60,000 tons of ammonia. The total system will cost roughly half a billion dollars. The wind driven ammonia feeds the corn crop needed by the ethanol plant, the ammonia plant produces the heat needed by the ethanol plant to do its processing, and the end of it all there is still a lot of waste heat that needs to be put to work or dissipated.
Now 60,000 tons of ammonia will fertilize 1,500 square miles of corn, or roughly four typical Iowa counties. If the ammonia is also used as the fuel for production then the total declines to about 250 square miles. A square mile of corn is worth about half a million dollars a year, so the total area supported produces $125M annually, and the wind farm and ammonia to fertilize and cultivate it is only about half a billion. The wind/ammonia plant will last fifteen to twenty five years so spreading its cost means 10% of the corn crop would be needed to completely free the process from any fossil fuel inputs beyond lubrication(!).
This alone seems to us to be a pretty good idea, but the greenhouse concept is one we'd not considered. Not only do we get up to a hundred million gallons of CO2 free ethanol production and a number of high paying jobs in the support of that industry, we can also see two hundred green collar jobs that will lead to fresh fruits and vegetables year round for the region, reducing our carbon footprint even further by dramatically cutting food miles.
The wind turbine technician and ethanol plant jobs are almost exclusively held by men - we still have a very traditional view here in this rural area. The green collar greenhouse jobs will require less training, less physical strength, are indoors, and will be seasonal in nature, very likely having much less work in the summertime. These are perfect "mom jobs" and/or after school jobs for kids.
Feminists are bristling. We don't care. Here in rural Iowa probably half of the women would jump at a chance to work a 9:00 to 3:00 position with benefits, allowing them to drop off and pick up kids at school while earning a bit of money in the time between. Being sensitive to the local culture is important when dealing with what is for this region a large scale human resources issue - two hundred jobs is a very large employer when you're talking about putting the plant next to a town with a population of 142, and being able to draw half of those bodies from a pool of women currently constrained by their choices in child rearing would be a very smart move.
During the summer it is normal for the thirteen to eighteen set to work in the fields - rock picking, hay baling, corn detasseling, and so forth are all important sources of income. We'd suggest that the greenhouse augment the 9:00 to 3:00 day shift with a 4:00 to 8:00 young adult shift. Buses would run from the highschool in the three larger towns nearest the plant providing consolidated transport for the region. The buses being needed for the kids, it would also make sense that they pick up and drop off the adult shift, and in small towns this is the same location; our editor's locker was across from the kindergarten classroom door his senior year.
These are very scary times, with peak oil already just past us, and peak natural gas on the horizon, but for areas lucky enough to have stranded renewable resources and the culture necessary to put them to work we may still do well for ourselves.