So why is it that Concerned Citizens of Fawn Lake and Spottsylvania County, a Virginia environmentalist group, opposes building the county’s first solar farm? And that in North Carolina, Currituck County has banned construction of new solar farms?

The answer’s so simple, it’s only two words long: Toxic wastes.

• When galvanized steel platforms that support solar panels rust over time, they release zinc into the soil. That’s toxic to plants.

• Rain runoff can wash herbicides used to clear land for the panels, fertilizers used for soil-stabilizing grass, pesticides and panel-cleaning agents into the soil, into well water, and into entire watersheds.

• Solar panels contain pollutants such as lead and carcinogenic cadmium, that rainfall can “[leach] from broken panels damaged during natural events – hail storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.”  

That’s bad enough. But it can get much worse.

• According to a seven-month Duke Energy investigation, “the move to increase solar power might be leading to an increase in the very emissions alternative energy sources aim to reduce,” specifically “nitrogen oxide (NOx), a dangerous air pollutant” and carbon dioxide (CO₂), the most well-known greenhouse gas.

When you have a dozen or so panels mounted on a home’s roof, that’s one thing. But that proposed solar farm in Virginia would have 1.8 million panels, containing an estimated 100,000 pounds of cadmium. And that’s just one solar farm.

But there’s a form of large-scale power generation that actually is every bit as renewable and sustainable as solar farms are supposed to be. It’s called Fuel Free Combined Cycle Generation (FFCCG). It burns no fossil fuels, has no carbon footprint whatever, and releases nothing toxic into the environment – no lead, no cadmium, no chemicals.

Instead of burning coal or natural gas to heat steam that drives generators, FFCCG superheats up to 450,000 pounds of air per hour to 1600º F. Then it feeds that high-speed, high-pressure, superheated air into a commercially available, off-the-shelf waste heat boiler that produces massive quantities of pressurized steam. That steam then drives a generator.

Unlike solar farms, FFCCG can generate electricity 24/7/365. Day and night. Rain or shine.

And while that proposed Virginia solar farm takes up 3,500 acres (an area equal to the nearby city of Fredericksburg) to generate 500mW of electricity, a 1.5-3.0 mW FFCCG system fits into two modules 8 feet high by 10 feet wide by 30 feet long. Using these modules as building blocks, you can generate 500kW, 1mW,3mW, and 12.5mW and combine up to 500mW.

With no fossil fuels. No carbon footprint. No toxic wastes. And on much less land than the size of a small city.

If that’s the kind of clean, sustainable power your business or organization can use, click here to learn more.

The post Clean Energy Without Toxic Wastes appeared first on SustainTech.