The activist-friendly town of Takoma Park, Md., unveiled an inspiring (albeit funny-looking) monument to the clean energy movement yesterday: A silo that holds 21 tons of organic corn. The corn will be used as an alternative fuel to heat a dozen homes in the town’s Save Our Sky Home-Heating Cooperative, keeping more than 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year. The cooperative started with Mike Tidwell, who recently became an alt-energy fanatic. He helped convince officials to let the silo be erected on public grounds, so that townspeople could fuel up with ease. Takoma Park is the only jurisdiction in Maryland with an official greenhouse gas reduction policy, and one city council member even has a corn-burning stove. “This is not just a wacky thing,” Tidwell said, adding that every town “should start thinking about a place [it] could put a corn silo.”
