Thinking Neutral: Small Towns Look to Renewables to Reduce Reliance on the Grid | Renewable Energy News Article

The town of Fowler, Colo., (pop. 1,087) sits in a 150-mile corridor between Pueblo and the Kansas border that boasts about half a million head of cattle. A few years ago, Fowler, like much of the country, faced a difficult economy and rising energy prices. Local government officials decided the cows and the energy weren't so unrelated as they seemed. They started thinking about how cattle – and the other features of the region – might help the town's fortunes.

Soon Fowler had become a standard-bearer for towns looking to become green town by going grid neutral, or producing as much or more power than it uses. They looked at a variety of renewable energy technologies, from putting the 2,400 tons of cow manure that are produced every day in Fowler into an anaerobic digester to make methane gas, to a wind farm to bedecking town buildings and grounds with solar panels.