Safety in Numbers
Brighter Planet's blog
Update: clean energy flowing in Greensburg!
The answer may be blowin’ in the wind, but it’s not always easy to find. For Greensburg, Kansas, it took a devastating natural disaster, a visionary commitment by residents, an arduous fund raising effort, and a lengthy planning and building process, to get the clean energy flowing. But that day is finally here.
Leveled in 2007 by a EF-5 tornado that destroyed more than 95% of the buildings in this town of 1500 residents, Greensburg vowed to rebuild as the greenest town in America. Now, less than three years later, that commitment has paid off as the first of ten massive new wind turbines begin to spin outside town.
The Greensburg Wind Farm by NativeEnergy came online this month, and we’re thrilled that members of the Brighter Planet community were able to play a key role in making this story a reality. As charter supporters of this wind farm, every Brighter Planet cardholder helped fund its construction every time you swiped your card to buy gas and groceries. Thanks everybody! It’s great to see another inspiring example of innovative ways we can come together to build a clean energy future.
The ten turbines, each capable of producing up to 1.25 MW of electricity, will provide enough clean energy to power the town several times over – this allows Brighter Planet members who contributed to the project to claim rights to some of the clean energy produced, with enough left over for the town of Greensburg also to claim carbon neutrality.
The sheer scale of these turbines is awesome; each one is as tall as a 35-story building, with blades a long as the wingspan of a Boeing 747. An eyesore for local residents? Quite the contrary – the only concerns raised during the placement process came from folks who wanted the project located where it could be seen from their homes.
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Safety in Numbers is Brighter Planet's blog about climate science, Ruby, Rails, data, transparency, and, well, us.
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