The Green Electrek Power Company (1/2) By David Sloan A radical answer to mass unemployment, endemic obesity and the clean energy crisis.

(1/2), (2/2).

Benefits Full employment. Cheap green electricity. Reduced oil and gas imports. Higher government tax revenues. Income for all people, regardless of educational skills. Healthier people, fitter people, less overweight people. Less social destitution, less heart disease, less mental health problems, less diabetes. The NHS now spends £3000 a second on people with obesity problems, mainly due to lack of exercise. One in three children in the West Midlands is now obese. Three-quarters of the men there are overweight or obese and yes, two-thirds of the women there are overweight or obese.

Not so long ago we had hundreds of coal mines producing coal to generate electricity in our country, keeping hundreds of thousands of miners in work .This work was hard in difficult conditions, but everyone who wanted to work was in employment. Now the mines are all but closed.

Manufacturing jobs too that were once so plentiful now seem to have all gone to India or China, where the labour is so much cheaper. Many of these factory jobs were tedious and repetitive production line jobs, but people didn't complain they were in employment, paying their own way. Today for many of our young and not so young adults, crime, drugs and social destitution seem the order of the day, with little hope of a job or a better future. Dependence on benefits and a sedentary lifestyle have created an explosion in obesity, wrecking the health of millions of families and brought the NHS to a critical funding crises.

In this deep global recession, one area of growth in the economy is clean green power. Wind farms are being built all over the country, on shore and off. Solar panels, tidal and wave power and thermal power are all attracting huge investment and will play a major part in our future.

All these sources of green energy are excellent carbon free clean solutions to our energy problems. So what is Green Electrek Power? Green Electrek Power is a radical but theoretically possible way to produce clean green electricity and at the same time, have the potential to create mass employment with enormous, health and social benefits to the nation. Most green energy is produced by using turbines, tidal power, wave power and wind power. Wind power of course is nothing new; windmills have been in use since the middle ages. Wind turbines are just the latest advance in this technology.

Another source of power in the middle ages was treadmills and tread wheels, used in agriculture, industry and in prisons. Henry Ford even used tread wheels in America as late as the nineteen-twenties! There's no reason why using the latest technology, modern advanced treadmills couldn't be built to be highly efficient producers of green electricity. Housed in comfortable reclaimed factories, many people could be employed on shift systems, walking at a steady rate, producing a constant supply of green energy for the national grid.

Having worked in the manufacturing industry myself all my life, I know this job would be much easer than production line work, and no experience would be needed. Would modern treadmills/tread wheels be cost-affective compared to wind turbines or solar panels?

Literally billions of pounds are been spent building wind farms across the country. A small group of people working together could produce just as much power as a wind turbine (on a one to one basis) and yes, be lot more cost-effective, and reliable. It's not always windy, it's not always sunny! The problem with both wind turbines and solar panels is their unpredictability. The lack of wind or dark winter skies can greatly reduce their efficiency to produce a reliable constant supply of electricity. Unfortunately wind turbines operate at only 100% capacity 30% of the time. I'm not knocking wind turbines, as up to 70% efficiency the rest of the time isn't bad.

Green Electrek with People working 24/7 days a week, would produce 100% capacity all of the time and be one of the most reliable safe solutions to our energy problems.

Continued...Next page (2/2)

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