
{"id":1456,"date":"2007-12-13T08:11:10","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T16:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/12\/13\/unc-wants-gas\/"},"modified":"2007-12-13T08:11:10","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T16:11:10","slug":"unc-wants-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/12\/13\/unc-wants-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"UNC wants gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Board of County Commissioners agreed on Tuesday to consider a proposal by UNC to use county landfill gas to power the university\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Carolina North development.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioners and county officials have said they would like to launch a possible gas-recovery project at the landfill as a way of reducing greenhouse gases. County staff last week had recommended that the commissioners request proposals from private firms as well as the university, but university officials said they would not bid against private firms.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioners postponed a decision regarding the proposal process so that university and county officials could meet to discuss UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible proposal.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We want to make Carolina North carbon-neutral, period,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Carolyn Elfland, UNC associate vice chancellor for campus services. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The landfill gas alone would make the energy carbon-neutral in the first phase, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re really interested in it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Elfland said the university plans to break ground on the first phase of Carolina North in January 2009, adding that officials hope to use the gas to simultaneously create both thermal and electric energy.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much more efficient to do it that way,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioners had last week questioned whether the university would need to flare the gas, rather than use if for energy, for a period of time before the first phase of the Carolina North development is complete.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If for a short period of time we needed to flare the gas because we wanted to address the odor issue, that might be acceptable among us, but clearly the end product has to be energy or some other beneficial usage,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Elfland said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Flaring it forever is not an acceptable solution, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really what we want to use it for either.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Mike Nelson pointed out that the landfill gas will peak, adding that it should be captured sooner rather than later, and questioned whether the first phase of Carolina North would begin by 2009.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really need the new Carolina North to be significantly developed if we could just pipe the gas,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Elfland said.<\/p>\n<p>She added that the Carolina North structures that already exist could use all of the electric energy produced by the landfill gas.<\/p>\n<p>County staff will draft an agreement with the university, which commissioners will consider on January 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Board of County Commissioners agreed on Tuesday to consider a proposal by UNC to use county landfill gas to power the university\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Carolina North development. Commissioners and county officials have said they would like to launch a possible gas-recovery project at the landfill as a way of reducing greenhouse gases. County staff last week&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}