#2 How Arkansas Can Use Unique Renewable Energy Sources!

The podcast discusses how Arkansas can increase its use of renewable energy. Currently, Arkansas relies heavily on natural gas, coal, and crude oil, with only 10% of its energy coming from renewable sources. The agricultural industry consumes the most energy in the state. The podcast suggests that Arkansas could use more unique and atypical renewable energy sources, such as anaerobic digestion of organic matter and geothermal energy from hot springs. It also mentions the use of turbine trees as a more visually appealing form of wind energy. The podcast concludes by discussing how individual Arkansans can contribute to renewable energy through home-sized wind turbines and small-scale hydroelectric power plants. The next episode will explore why some communities rely more on renewables and how science and society can collectively use more renewable energy resources. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to my podcast where today I'll be talking about how Arkansas can increase renewable energy use with the unique and atypical renewable energy sources I kind of discussed in a previous pod. And later on, I want to shortly talk about how individual Arkansans can use some unique sources as well. To begin, I kind of want to highlight what Arkansas is using right now in terms of energy sources. So, when I looked online, the U.S. Energy Information Administration basically summarized that Arkansas is not a renewable state. We use a lot of natural gas because we have a lot in the Arcoma Basin, and then after that, we have a lot of coal and crude oil in the south. So something I found useful to know is that the agricultural industry consumes most of the energy of any sector in Arkansas. Not surprising, and it was around two-fifths of all the energy in the state. And not surprisingly, only 10 percent of our energy is renewable, and I think most of that came from hydroelectric power. The second highest is biomass renewable energy, since we have a huge agriculture industry, I'm not surprised. But I think there could definitely be a lot more. So like I talked about in the last pod, I think there could be a lot more use of our poop, a lot more use of our other organic matter. It said online that we use a lot of our wood and wood chips and biomass, and there was not a lot of any reports on other organic material. So I think there could definitely be more anaerobic digestion in the agriculture industry, meaning there could be more anaerobic digesters that take in the organic matter and regenerate it to create energy using the methane coming off of it. Another idea that I immediately thought of at the top of my head was Hot Springs, Arkansas, and that's where I'm from, by the way. So if you know Hot Springs, there's a lot of hot waters, hot spring waters, running down the mountain at various spots. So that made me think of geothermal energy from the ground, like that ground must be pretty warm at the surface. So I did my research, and I was wondering why there's not any geothermal energy sources coming from that area. So I think that's another great idea to have. And like I mentioned in the previous pod, there are some very populated tourist attraction areas that have a system in place to take heat and use that heat to generate energy, like the body heat example I talked about. So I think something involved with heat from the hot springs could be very useful, in my opinion. Furthermore, I also read that there's not a lot of wind turbine renewable energy in the state, and a lot of people don't like them because of the way they look, but I found online that there are turbine trees. So if you didn't know, turbine trees are the same thing as the normal turbine you see in the plains in the south, but they look just like trees, and they're made of three steel trunks that stem into tiny branches. But the thing about it is that it's attractive, and I think this would be great to have in places like parks or around the city and things like that. It's very artsy. One of the last things I want to mention in regards to Arkansas is the thing I thought this would be really cool, specifically northwest Arkansas, because they usually have a more sustainable development there, and they have a little bit more money from capital investment. But I read or I found online that somewhere in the Netherlands, they have these bike paths or simple trails that people can walk on, and these trails are coated with photosensitive material that glow at night. And so what this does is it prevents us having to use street lamps every night that are on for hours and hours on end using energy. So things like this, in the end, prevent us from having to rely on the non-renewable energy sources for the city. Okay. I think now we're reaching almost towards the end. I think it's time to talk about how individual Arkansans can contribute some part. Since we are located in the south, the first thing I thought of were home-sized wind turbines. When looking online, the cost ranges from a small couple of hundreds to a couple of thousands, depending on where you get it from. When looking online for a wind turbine, it's ideal to find one with a range of 5 to 15 kilowatts of power to make a good contribution to powering your home. And though this upfront cost can seem scary to some people, think about how it reduces your energy bills over time to compensate for the upfront cost. And they can either be on your house or on its own pole. It really depends on what you want. And my last idea, it applies to those that live close to flowing water, so like a river or a lake. And a lot of people in Arkansas most likely live close to a river or a lake. So there are many large-scale hydroelectric power plants, but you're allowed to get small-scale ones for your home. And these can generate enough electricity to power homes on river that have at least a one-meter drop. All right, so knowing this, I want to now officially wrap up the pod. Next week, you all will be expecting to hear a kind of conclusion to this series that I have about unique renewable energy resources. I kind of want to discuss both why societies or different communities such as Arkansas don't rely on renewables as much and why places such as the Netherlands and New Amsterdam have so many of these unique renewable energy resources and how it helps them progress more as a community. And so the emphasis of my last podcast will pretty much explain how science, society can collectively use more renewable energy resources in terms of a lot of major things. So thank you all for listening to this week and stay tuned for next. Thank you.