Filthy Water ic Clean Energy

When residents of Santa Rosa flip a wall switch, they can take a little credit for the lights that come on. In this California city, yesterday’s toilet flush is today’s electricity.

 Santa Rosa and Calpine Corporation, an wenergy company, are partners in the world’s largest geothermal wastewater-to-power project. They are using urban effluent to generate clean energy, improving life not only for humans but also for fish. 

For the city, the partnership has eliminated fines it was paying for dumping wastewater into the Russian River and the $400-million expense of building new wastewater storage facilities.

For Calpine, the arrangement has revived geothermal steam fields that were declining from overuse.

    * Injecting cleansed municipal wastewater into underground geothermal fields can create sources of steam for generating electricity and reduce wastewater disposal problems.

    * Projects in the Santa Rosa, ­Calif., area are providing lessons in how best to build shallow- and deep-drilled geothermal power plants.

    * Small earthquakes can be caused in the area immediately surrounding such plants—a serious complication that municipalities must consider.

Clean Energy from Filthy Water video-1

Wellinghoff's goal is to enable a near total transformation of the electricity sector, allowing for renewable resources, such as the sun, wind and flow of rivers, to meet a greater proportion of U.S. electricity demand. 

 Clean Energy from Filthy Water video-2

The benefits, according to Wellinghoff, range from "green" jobs to cutting by 80 percent emissions of the greenhouse gases causing climate change by 2050. And, ultimately, electricity harvested from the wind may be the cheapest form of electricity generation, saving money for consumers.