Presenting in Anacortes on August 13th

In this new era of melting polar icecaps and skyrocketing energy prices, some citizens from our county got together and formed Skagit Beat the Heat. This group has been working to raise awareness of climate change and ways to slow its impact. Now Beat the Heat has invited us to present at their August 13th meeting, at Village Pizza in Anacortes (downtown at 807 Commercial Avenue) starting at 6pm. The meeting is open to the public and any of our other supporters are welcome to show up, especially if they happened to be searching for local groups doing something about global warming!

We are redoubling our efforts to get out in the community, so look for us at various events--it being an election year helps too. I'll also be posting more in coming days, as our schedule has finally opened up after a July full of important dates. Watch this space!

Now we have a problem

Most of the time, the weekly coal price update from the Energy Information Agency isn't all that interesting. However, in recent months the spot price of eastern low-sulfur coal has broken loose of its historical range and rocketed up into new territory. This is a problem because utilities have been counting on coal to keep providing cheap power while the price of natural gas bounces around. If coal isn't cheap, the price of electricity can no longer be held in check. The legendary mines of Wyoming's Powder River Basin are a thousand miles from anywhere, and the trains hauling that coal use a lot of diesel--high energy prices have pushed through the final line of defense. Now we have a problem.

Conventional Milk is Good Milk

Most of the dairy farmers in Western Washington proudly produce "conventional" milk; in practice, they use fertilizer on some of their crops and treat their cows with antibiotics if they get sick. I've seen a few of these farmers get quite upset about organic milk marketing implying that they don't treat their animals well; they see unwillingness to use antibiotics on sick cows as inhumane and prohibiting fertilizer as a recipe for inefficient land use. This letter on organic or "rBST-free" milk shows the position that many dairymen take, but now even Darigold--their own cooperative--is banning rBST. The trend towards locally-sourced food may push consumers back towards our farmers; most national organic brands (with the exception of Organic Valley) actually get their milk from tenuously-certified suppliers like Aurora. We invite our readers to visit the Western Washington farms and meet the farmers; after that, they will be proud to drink their milk!

So, how about those energy prices?

Unless you've spent the last six months in a cave, you've probably heard about the run-up in oil prices. Fewer people, however, have paid attention to natural gas. The chart at right shows the January 2009 natural gas contract, which had reliably traded at around $9/MMbtu until late this winter; for months, I would check the contract each day and considered anything above nine dollars to indicate strong demand.

Those whose job it is to look at the future aren't much help, since they use the past as a guide; unfortunately for them, the energy markets seem to have departed from historical trends. The Department of Energy's "Short Term Energy Outlook" bravely predicts natural gas prices in the $11/MMbtu range through 2009 (somewhat below both current spot and forward levels). The STEO from a year ago (pdf) predicted that 2008 prices would average just over $8.00 (so far, only a few weeks in January got under that price), so clearly no one wants to be the one to introduce a truly scary future scenario.

With higher oil prices, people will drive and fly less, reducing demand and moderating prices. Things may work differently for natural gas, since less natural gas use is discretionary--we don't relax by leaving all the lights on in the house overnight or turning the heat up to 80F. In an earlier post, I discussed natural gas usage in the electricity-generation and fertilizer-manufacturing business. Beyond those and other industrial processes, the vast majority of natural gas is used for space heating and hot water; demand for both may fall, but not immediately and not without substantial adjustment. We have the privilege and the curse of living in interesting times!

Come to Lynden on May 28th!

Anaerobic digesters are not very photogenic, but we still think they are interesting to visit. Washington state's first manure-to-energy project went online in 2004 at the Vander Haak farm near Lynden. We have visited the digester a half-dozen times and keep coming back, bringing new guests each time. Having this project so close makes it much easier for us to show various stakeholders that the technology works. So we want to invite our readers to tour the Vander Haak digester on Wednesday, May 28th. Give us a call at (360) 424-4519 or send an E-mail to farmpowernw@gmail.com for more information. We hope to see you there!

A Real Press Release

We have never doubted the support of Puget Sound Energy during the year we have been working with them. Still, we appreciated their willingness to sign a Memorandum Of Understanding to help convince other people they wanted to buy our power. In the spirit of good feeling, PSE also prepared a press release that went out on the wire today. It was picked up by a number of local news sources (even getting 15 seconds of airtime on Northwest Cable News) and we've heard from some people who probably would never known about us. This worked a lot better than doing our own press release!

Farm Power Turns One

Today marks Farm Power's first anniversary--after a full day of visiting dairy farmers on April 10, 2007, we put our signatures on paper to found the company.

It is fitting that after almost a year of steadily-increasing visibility, we gave our first presentation that was completely open to the public. The photo above shows the nice little group that turned out to hear us at the Rexville Grange on March 27. At the state and national levels, the Grange advocates for farmer-friendly policies; that night, a mix of neighbors, friends, and members just showed up to learn more about local renewable energy. The Grange hall is located only about a mile away from the site of our first project, which will be owned by our appropriately-named subsidiary Farm Power Rexville LLC!

We have been presenting to other community organizations, most recently two different Rotary clubs. However, the Grange seems to most closely match the Farm Power vision, so it is the first organization that we have actually joined. The Rexville branch doesn't have a website, but any interested readers can send a note to their account: rexville_815 (at) yahoo (dot) com. For our younger readers who prefer membership in virtual organizations, Farm Power now has a Facebook group; I'll be posting updates regularly there too.