At this time of year for kite-flying I’m reminded of the beauty and power of windmills as well as songwriter Bob Dylan’s classic “Blowin’ in the Wind.” In fact, the answer to at least part of our nations’ energy/climate change/green economy and jobs problem is “blowin’ in the wind.”
According to Lu et al. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2009), wind power accounted for 42 percent of all new electrical capacity added to the United States electrical system in 2008, although wind continues to account for a relatively small fraction of the total electricity-generating capacity, i.e., 25.4 gigawatts (GW) of a total of 1,075 GW nationwide. These same authors asserted that wind could account for as much as 25 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050 with an installed wind capacity of 300 GW. While wind resources of the lower 48 states in the USA, specifically in the Great Plains states, are sufficient to provide 16 times the total current power demand in the USA (see map below), tapping all the available wind capacity is impractical and other renewable energy resources can also contribute to the greening of the USA energy system.
Of course, while wind is free, the infrastructure to gather, transform, store and/or distribute wind-generated electricity is not free. Advanced innovations in wind turbine technology, however, have reduced wind-power production costs. According to the American Wind Energy Association, over the last 20 years, the cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80 percent. In the early 1980s, when the first utility-scale turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants can generate electricity for less than 5 cents/kWh with the Production Tax Credit in many parts of the USA, a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants. This is something to blow our horns about. From the Lu et al. (2009) study, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator responsible for the bulk of electricity transmission in Texas, estimates the extra cost for transmission of up to 4.6 GW of wind-generated electricity to be $180 per kW, which is 10 percent of the capital cost for installation of the wind power-generating equipment. This is a large investment, but so were the Iraq War and the Wall Street bail-out.
Most Americans don’t give much thought to where or how electricity is generated. We simply flip a switch or turn a dial or click a mouse or wave a Wii nunchuk to enjoy the convenience and comfort in our electrified cottages, work places, hospitals and health care, banking, shopping and bill-paying, cooking and heating, manufacturing, virtually instantaneous digital communications and recreational entertainment. With electric vehicles coming online, even our transportation system is increasingly powered by electricity.
But we should give thought to where and how electricity is generated. We can reduce our ecological footprints and pollution loads by using electricity generated from renewable resources, such as wind power. We can better match desired end uses with appropriate energy sources, such as water heating with solar flat plate collectors rather than utility-generated electricity, which means using electricity more efficiently. We can save money and concurrently save the planet by switching from energy production technologies that result in externalities—air and water pollution, degraded landscapes through strip mines, oil spills, and worst of all radioactive wastes—that impart a heavy cost to the global commons. By avoiding energy by-products that are toxic and life-threatening that cost a lot to clean at point-source and immeasurable costs in compromising the Earth’s living support systems that do this clean up for free, if we don’t eliminate the system!
The numbers in tables like the one above from the U.S. Department of Energy (2009) do not include cradle-to-grave embodied energy costs to construct, operate, and decommission these electrical power plants. Nor do these numbers include externalities—the hidden ecological footprints—that impact the Earth’s life support systems that sustain all of us.
The democratization of the energy system—that is, decentralizing and linking energy production and consumption so that each home or neighborhood can generate its own electricity and other energy sources for its own needs—is what’s really blowin’ in the wind. The access to off-the-grid, “distributed energy systems” are small-scale power generation technologies (typically in the range of 3 kW to 10,000 kW) used to provide a local, alternative in all 50 states. Electricity from distributed energy systems gives power to the people—democracy. And eventually no more power transmission lines, no more nuke plants, no more strip mines. So, as part of the peak-oil solution to move to renewable energy sources, is wind power just hot air? I think not. And I hope we build wind-power capacity instead of continuing Never-go-way Nuclear, Big Peak Oil, King Coal’s tilting at windmills as pie-in-the-sky eco-rhetoric. For more, read Amory Lovins’ classic book (1977) Soft Energy Paths: Toward A Durable Peace.
We can all breathe easier once we’ve gone with the wind.
Best regards,
GEM Education Center Blog 