CATCHING THE WIND
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Catching the Wind
The World's Fastest-Growing Renewable Energy Source is Coming of Age
by Jim Motavalli
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2176
At the base of the Sagamore Bridge, the gateway to Cape Cod, is a
nostalgia-inducing fake windmill that looks like it belongs with
tulips and wooden shoes in an image of Holland's colorful past. In
fact, it's advertising for a Christmas tree store, but its mere
presence is an irony as the Cape is convulsed in an epic battle over
some very real wind turbines. Cape Wind plans to build the first
offshore wind park in the U.S. in Nantucket Sound, just five miles
off the coast of some of the most exclusive real estate in America.
If the project is built, it will at least temporarily set a record as
the largest wind farm in the world, its 130 turbines producing 420
megawatts of electricity. If it is defeated by a well-funded
opposition group with some highly placed political allies, it will be
a resounding defeat for wind power in the U.S., but possibly just a
minor setback for a worldwide renewable energy movement that is
filling its sails with the inexhaustible power of the wind.
The Growing Power of Wind
Even as the world experiences ever-more-severe storms and sets new
temperature records that are being linked to global warming, we're
also setting new records for installed wind energy. The two phenomena
might appear to be unrelated, but actually they're closely tied
together. Wind energy is zero-emissions energy, a renewable resource
that is one of our last, best hopes for staving off devastating
climate change. Wind energy has grown 28 percent annually over the
last five years, and the so-called "installed capacity" (the
generating power of working wind turbines) doubles every three years:
It is the fastest-growing energy source in the world. Some 6,000
megawatts of wind capacity -- enough to power 1.5 million homes -- are
added annually.
Workers erect a wind turbine. The world had 39,000 megawatts of
installed wind power in 2003, and new construction was proceeding so
quickly that wind is now the fastest-growing form of energy.
- Digital Vision
The old-fashioned windmills that once pumped water for local farmers
have been replaced with high-technology, high-efficiency
industrial-grade turbines. The General Electric turbines scheduled to
be installed by Cape Wind (resulting from GE's purchase of Enron's
wind assets at fire-sale prices) offer a whopping 3.6 megawatts each,
are 40 stories tall on thin towers, and boast three prop-like blades
the length of two jumbo jets.
As Business 2.0 reports, "Since 1985, the electric generating
capacity of a typical windmill has gone from about 100 kilowatts of
constant power to 1.5 megawatts, with a corresponding reduction in
cost from 12 cents per kilowatt-hour to less than five cents."
Because of federal tax credits (recently renewed until the end of
2005), the real cost of wind power is getting close to such
perennials as nuclear, coal and natural gas, which explains the
interest of big profit-oriented companies like GE. In 2001, 6,500
megawatts of new wind-generating capacity were installed worldwide,
and by 2003 the world had 39,000 megawatts of installed wind power.
Fascinating History
Wind technology has increased steadily since the first windmills for
pumping water and grinding grain were developed in ancient Persia
around 500 to 900 A.D. (see companion story). More than six million
small windmills were installed in the U.S. between 1850 and 1970.
They were small units producing the equivalent of one horsepower or
less and their primary duties were supplying water for animals and
human needs. Rural electrification in the 1930s made most of them
obsolete, but many remained in place to serve as evocative
backgrounds in Hollywood westerns.
Poul La Cour, a Danish inventor, built a practical four-blade
windmill in 1891, and by 1917 windmills producing 25 kilowatts were
in common use in Denmark (still a wind energy pioneer today). The
first utility-scale wind generator was the 100-kilowatt Balaclava
windmill, built on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 1931.
Experimentation on large wind machines continued in the U.S., France,
Germany, Great Britain and Denmark.
The U.S. government developed a newfound interest in wind power after
the oil embargoes of the 1970s left the country feeling vulnerable
about energy supplies. The U.S. Federal Wind Energy Program was
created at that time, and California became a showplace for
large-scale wind farms. Some 17,000 machines of 20 to 350 kilowatts
(producing 1,700 megawatts in total) were installed between 1981 and
1990. A 15 percent federal energy credit helped, as did a 50 percent
California energy credit (both were gone by the mid-1980s).
Unfortunately, many of the California windmills suffered from
insufficient development time and operating difficulties, including
the well-known Transpower wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains.
Compounding the difficulties, the tax credits were issued on the
basis of "installed generator capacity" rather than the actual output
of the wind turbines.
After many rushed American designs failed to deliver on their
promises, the much healthier Danish wind business had captured 50
percent of the U.S. market by 1986. U.S. companies, including U.S.
Windpower, Zond Systems (since acquired by Enron, then by General
Electric, a powerhouse today), Southwest Wind Power and Bergey
Windpower, gradually began a comeback in the 1990s.
A Bright Future...With Clouds
Large wind farms can be major players in electricity generation,
producing 300 or 400 megawatts of power.
- Renewable Choice Energy
The U.S. (6,374 megawatts at the end of 2003) and Europe dominate the
development and installation of wind power. Large-scale wind farms,
both on- and off-shore, can now be found from Denmark to New Zealand.
Europe has more than 28,000 installed megawatts of wind power (70
percent of world capacity). World wind leaders include Germany, the
U.S., Spain, Denmark and India, each with more than 2,000 megawatts.
Germany is in the lead, with 14,609 megawatts installed by the end of
2003. The wind energy industry in Germany employs 35,000 people and
supplies 3.5 percent of the nation's electricity. Denmark has the
world's highest proportion of electricity generated by wind, more
than 20 percent. The Danish Wind Energy Association would like to see
that ratcheted up to 35 percent wind power by 2015.
In the U.S. (which gets less than one percent of its energy from
wind) the industry rebounded somewhat in the late 1990s. There are
now clusters of wind turbines in Texas and Colorado, as well as newly
updated sites in California. According to the American Wind Energy
Association (AWEA), there are now wind energy products in almost
every state west of the Mississippi, and in many Northeastern states.
California leads with more than 2,042 megawatts of installed wind
energy, followed by Texas, which experienced 500 percent wind growth
in 2001 and now has 1,293 megawatts. AWEA explains that one megawatt
of wind capacity is enough to supply 240 to 300 average American
homes, and California's wind power alone can save the energy
equivalent of 4.8 million barrels of oil per year.
AWEA says the U.S. wind industry will install up to 3,000 megawatts
of new capacity by 2009. If that proves true, the U.S. will have
nearly 10,000 megawatts of wind power, enough to power three million
homes. The economics of wind are looking increasingly good. The cost
of generating a kilowatt-hour of electricity from wind power has
dropped from $1 in 1978 to five cents in 1998, and is expected to
drop even further, to 2.5 cents. Wind turbines themselves have
dropped in installed cost to $800 per kilowatt. Although, according
to the Financial Times, wind power is still twice as expensive as
generation from a modern oil-fired plant, federal subsidies and tax
benefits available in many countries level the playing field.
One of the biggest hindrances to even greater wind installation in
the U.S. is the on-again, off-again nature of the federal wind energy
production tax credit (PTC). Introduced as part of the Energy Policy
Act of 1992, PTC granted 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (since adjusted
for inflation) for the first 10 years of operation to wind plants
brought on line before the end of June 1999. A succession of
short-term renewals and expirations of PTC led to three boom-and-bust
cycles (the most recent a boom in 2003 and a bust in 2004) in wind
power installation. Its current extension to the end of 2005 may see
some wind projects struggling to meet the PTC requirements before the
credit expires once again.
The U.S. could go further, and states with big wind resources would
reap major rewards. If Congress were to establish a 20 percent
national renewable energy standard by 2020 (requiring utilities to
sell a fifth of their energy from sustainable sources), the Union of
Concerned Scientists reports, wind-rich North Dakota could gain $1.4
billion in new investment from wind and other renewables. North
Dakota consumers would save $363 million in lower electricity bills
annually if the standard were combined with improvements in energy
efficiency. The environment would also benefit with a 28 percent
reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from the plains states. A
watered-down version of this "renewables portfolio standard" (RPS)
was included in the 2002 and 2003 versions of the failed federal
energy bill, but failed to make the final cut.
Just such an RPS, on the state level, was enacted when George W. Bush
was governor of Texas, and led that state to its pre-eminent status
as the number two wind generator in the U.S. Governor George Pataki
recently issued an executive order establishing such an RPS for New
York State: 20 percent renewables by 2010. New York currently gets 17
percent of its electricity from renewable sources, principally hydro
power. The 2004 elections may have been terrible news for the
environment, but one bright spot was the passage of a Colorado RPS
that will require the state to buy 10 percent of its energy from
renewable sources by 2015. Seventeen states have now enacted RPS
rules.
AWEA thinks that, with a favorable political climate, the U.S. could
have 100,000 megawatts of installed wind power by 2013, with a full
potential of 600,000 megawatts. The group points out that wind power
could offset a projected three to four billion cubic feet per day
natural gas supply shortage in the U.S.
Even in the absence of a lucrative production tax credit, wind
projects are moving forward. Current projects include construction of
the world's third-largest wind farm, with 136 turbines and 204
megawatts capacity, in New Mexico as part of the utility-run New
Mexico Wind Energy Center. FPL Energy is also installing 162
megawatts of 1.8-megawatt Danish-made Vestas turbines in Solano
County, California for the High Winds project. New England can boast
of Green Mountain Power's project in Searsburg, Vermont, which was
completed in 1997 and features 11 turbines generating six megawatts.
Other projects are underway in Oklahoma and South Dakota, on the
Rosebud Sioux reservation. Tex Hall of the National Congress of
American Indians observes that "tribes here [in the Great Plains]
have many thousands of megawatts of potential wind power blowing
across our reservation lands....Tribes need access to the federal grid
to bring our value-added electricity to market throughout our region
and beyond."
Offshore Wind and Local Opposition
Many of the largest wind farms today are being built offshore, with
varying amounts of controversy. Despite its proximity to Jones Beach,
one of the largest summer recreational destinations in the New York
area (with six million annual visitors), the proposed Long Island
Offshore Wind Initiative (with between 25 and 50 turbines, producing
up to four megawatts each) has not generated significant opposition,
although it could develop as plans move forward. The Long Island wind
farm "will be pollution-free, boundless and blow a gust of clean air
into the future of energy production," says Ashok Gupta of the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
Offshore wind farms are the wave of the future. One study estimates
that a string of such farms off Long Island could produce 77 percent
of the region's power needs.
- Courtesy of Vestas Wind Systems A/S
With peak energy demand on Long Island soaring (up 10 percent just
between 2001 and 2002), there is clearly a need for new and cleaner
sources of electricity. On the western end of the South Shore, the
utility-owned wind farm would be two to five miles offshore and
provide electricity for 30,000 homes when completed in 2007. Long
Island's suffering air would benefit from the annual reduction of 834
tons of sulfur dioxide, 332 tons of nitrogen oxide and 227,000 tons
of climate-altering carbon dioxide. Taken as a whole, Long Island has
incredible potential wind resources along its south shore extending
past Montauk Point. According to one study, a string of wind farms in
that region could produce 5,200 megawatts of power, or enough to meet
77 percent of Long Island's ever-expanding needs.
Germany is a world leader in offshore wind, and recently finalized an
agreement to build a 350-megawatt project (with 70 five-megawatt
turbines) off the island of Rügen. Britain's Crown Estate, which owns
the UK's territorial seabed, has granted approval for 13 offshore
wind farms, and British utility Powergen has plans to develop a giant
500-megawatt offshore farm in the Thames estuary near London. The
Irish government has approved a 520-megawatt wind farm offshore
southeast of Dublin. China is building a 400-megawatt facility 60
miles from Beijing, and says confidently it will be generating 12
percent of its energy from renewables by 2020.
None of these projects have met with the kind of opposition that
stalks the Cape Wind project, a planned $700 million development that
would cover 26 square miles off Cape Cod. That wind farm, with
General Electric turbines up to 40 stories tall, would surpass
Denmark's Horns Reef as the world's largest.
The proposal has split the environmental community, drawing
opposition from such powerful environmental allies as Robert Kennedy,
Jr. "I'm a strong advocate of wind farms on the oceans and high
seas," says Kennedy. "But there are appropriate places for
everything. We wouldn't put one of these in Yosemite, and I think
environmentalists are falling into a trap if they think the only
wilderness areas worth preserving are in the Rocky Mountains or
American West. The most important are the ones close to our cities,
where the public has access to them. And Nantucket Sound is a
wilderness, which people need to experience. I always get nervous
when people talk about privatizing the commons. In this case, the
benefits of the power extracted from Nantucket Sound are far
outweighed by the other values that our communities derive from it."
Writer Bill McKibben, however, argues in Orion that the criticisms
amount to "small truths." The bigger point is that Nantucket's air
contains 370 parts of carbon dioxide, up from 275 parts per million
before the Industrial Revolution. "And if we keep burning coal and
gas and oil, the scientific consensus is that by the latter part of
the century the planet's temperature will have risen five degrees
Fahrenheit to a level higher than we've seen for 50 million years."
The choice, he writes, "is not between windmills and untouched
nature, it's between windmills and the destruction of the planet's
biology on a scale we can barely begin to imagine."
- - - - - - -
Seething Passions
The Cape seemed deceptively tranquil on a recent visit. Seething
passions were just below the surface. The latest attempt to scuttle
the project had just been made public: an amendment to the Defense
Authorization Act introduced by Senator John Warner (R-VA), which
would have required Congressional approval for any offshore wind
project in the U.S. If it had been adopted (it was, instead,
withdrawn the next day), it would have forced Cape Wind back to the
beginning of what had already been a three-year regulatory process.
The permitting process has been a long, hard slog for Cape Wind
Associates, which has spent an estimated $15 million trying to get
its offshore farm built. With Warner's amendment lifted (reportedly
because of the objections of House Republicans), the next step was
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' draft Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS), a staggering 3,800 pages released November 9. The
EIS had been expected in September, but it sat for several months,
some say for political reasons, on the desk of one Raymond DuBois, an
undersecretary of defense in the Pentagon for military installations
and environmental programs.
Once installed, Denmark's offshore wind farms generated little
controversy.
- Courtesy of Vestas Wind Systems A/S
As had been expected, the draft EIS is largely favorable to Cape
Wind. "This report is a big step towards greater energy
independence," said a jubilant Jim Gordon, Cape Wind's president. But
opponents, led by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, were
subdued. "This is a flawed report, written and paid for largely by
Cape Wind," said Alliance Assistant Director Audra Parker.
For the record, Warner's family has property whose view would be
affected by the Cape Wind Project. So does Senator Ted Kennedy
(D-MA), whose famous "compound" is in Hyannis, near Ground Zero.
Everybody on the Cape has an opinion about the project, though it's
not generally expressed with the usual bumper stickers and lawn
signs. Instead, there are intense activist groups on both sides of
the fence, and public opinion polls that indicate a population that
is dramatically split on the project.
The tide has been turning somewhat against the project after a
concerted media campaign by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.
The Alliance has some environmental trappings, but its founder, Doug
Yearley, is chairperson emeritus of mining giant Phelps Dodge
Corporation and a board member of Marathon Oil (a winner of the Toxic
Action Center's "Dirty Dozen Award"). To be fair, he's also a member
of the World Wildlife Fund's National Council. The Alliance raised
$1.8 million in 2003 through donations from such high-profile Cape
residents as Paul Fireman of Reebok, but it spent even more, $2.4
million, on what the Boston Herald called "a small army of hired
lawyers, lobbyists and publicists."
Even with the draft EIS released, there will still be a long slog.
There will be public hearings, the issuance of a final EIS (expected
in mid 2005), more comments, then a permitting decision by the Army
Corps. The state has a role also in the form of the Office of Coastal
Zone Management. Even if a permit is issued (it can be approved with
conditions or denied outright), there's a good chance the Alliance
would then file a lawsuit.
There are articulate voices on both sides. "This project in this
place is inappropriate for any number of reasons," says the
passionately persuasive Audra Parker. "We're supportive of renewable
energy, but this is risky technology -- the first offshore wind project
in the U.S. -- and do we really want to turn our priceless Nantucket
Sound into a scientific experiment?"
The Alliance raises the specter of Cape Wind as a stalking horse for
at least three more large-scale wind farms in Nantucket Sound. It
says the five million people who visit the Cape and the islands
(Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard) every year will be "confronted by
130 huge towers in the Sound," each 100 feet higher than the famous
Bourne and Sagamore bridges. In fliers, the group warns about "a
risky new technology and a developer who has never built a wind
plant."
Supporters say that Cape Wind can replace 113 million gallons of oil
per year, that it will reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions by
one million tons per year (the equivalent of taking 162,000 cars off
the road) and reduce New England's wholesale electric prices by $25
million per year. They also say its construction will create 1,000
new jobs.
Bill Eddy, a local Episcopal priest, has been a vocal supporter and
founder of the 3,500-member Clean Power Now, which supports the
project as strongly as the Alliance opposes it. "The wind farm could
contribute 75 percent of our electrical needs and have a noticeable
and positive impact on our electricity costs for the life of the
project," says the gray-haired Eddy in a booming, pulpit-friendly
voice. He also thinks the wind project will improve Cape Cod's
surprisingly bad air quality (it's 50 percent worse than Boston's,
Eddy says).
Eddy built his own first wind generator in 1976, to celebrate the
national Bicentennial. A wind farm on Nantucket Sound, he says,
"represents a compelling vision for our future." He quotes King
Solomon from the Bible's Book of Proverbs, "Where there is no vision,
the people perish." Eddy feels betrayed by America's national
leaders, who talk about the need for energy independence, but then
refuse to take a stand in supporting key projects. "Sometimes I think
they'd rather see Arlington National Cemetery expanded with a
thousand new markers for young men who died fighting to protect our
oil supply than to have to endure the sight of wind turbines
producing clean energy off Cape Cod," he says.
When E visited, the unassuming Mark Rodgers, a spokesperson for Cape
Wind, was combative about the well-organized opposition. "The
Alliance approach has created a lot of unnecessary fears," he says.
"They've dramatically outspent us with incessant fear-mongering." The
Alliance's spending has produced results, Rodgers admits. In 2002, 55
percent of Cape residents supported the project, but after two years
of Alliance undermining the situation has reversed, and a Cape Cod
Times poll shows 55 percent oppose the wind farm. (Rodgers points
out, however, that the Times has vehemently opposed Cape Wind, and
that its reporting on the poll failed to disclose the 20 percent who
simply refused to answer the newspaper's question.)
Rodgers says that alarmist wind opponents can point to grandiose
proposals by the New York-based Winergy to construct as many as 2,000
turbines off the coasts of New England, Delaware, Maryland and
Virginia, ruining the view for millions. "They've gone up and down
the coast and announced plans for wind farms everywhere," Rodgers
says. "It's easy to send out press releases, but much harder to
actually do the hard work of licensing wind farms. Their approach has
created a lot of unnecessary concern." Dennis Quaranta, whose
experience comes from developing a fish farm in Long Island Sound's
Gardner Bay, says that Winergy doesn't plan to operate wind farms,
but will bring in management teams after it obtains the necessary
permits. But it's unclear if any of the company's projects have moved
very far.
Rodgers believes the release of the Cape Wind EIS will pave the way
for the wind farm to begin construction in 2007. "The document, put
together by the Army Corps with input from other agencies, shows that
there are compelling public interest benefits from this clean energy
project," he says. But a lot of wind will be blown before then. Both
supporters and opponents of Cape Wind make comparisons to the Horns
Reef wind farm off Denmark's west coast. There are indeed many
similarities. The projects are of comparable size (though Cape Wind
will be larger), and both are in parts of the country heavily used by
recreational visitors. But two years after Denmark's turbines started
generating power, the controversy has died down. Despite the
Alliance's determined efforts to make Horns Reef appear to be a
disaster, it has been woven into the fabric of a nation firmly
committed to wind power.
Denmark: Running With the Wind
On a fast train ride across Denmark from east to west, passengers get
used to the sight of rows of tall white Vestas wind turbines turning
slowly in the ever-present breeze. The Danes pioneered wind energy
development dating back to the pioneer and inventor Poul la Cour in
the 1890s. A Danish engineer, Johannes Juul, was the first to connect
a wind turbine with an AC generator to the electrical grid.
Denmark-based companies also helped spark the modern wind movement in
the 1970s. In 2003, Danish manufacturers had nearly 40 percent of the
world turbine market, which grows at the astounding rate of 20
percent per year. Ninety percent of the turbines manufactured in the
country go for export. Wind is the third-largest contributor to the
Danish economy, after pharmaceuticals and Lego blocks, and provides
20,000 jobs in all of its dimensions. Denmark itself has 3,100
megawatts of installed wind power, but that figure will undoubtedly
be outmoded by the time this article goes to press.
Peter Helmer Steen, an associate energy minister, says more than
100,000 Danish families are members of wind co-ops.
- Jim Motavalli
Denmark is a small country, with just 5.4 million people, but it is a
mighty force in the wind industry. Just one industrial giant, Vestas
(which recently merged with its largest competitor, NEG Micron) has
35 percent of the international market and employs 8,500 people. Its
turbines are being installed all over Europe (including largest
customer Germany, as well as Spain, Great Britain, Portugal and
Greece), Canada, Australia and many other countries. When tax
incentives are in place, the U.S. is also a large-scale Vestas
customer.
Hanne Jersild of the Danish Wind Energy Association hopes wind will
meet 35 percent of the country's needs by 2015.
- Jim Motavalli
Blavand is a beachside resort town at Denmark's western tip, a summer
mecca for hordes of German tourists who rent the colorful
thatched-roof summer houses that line the dunes. On a blustery but
sunny afternoon in October, they thronged the town's main shopping
street and made pilgrimages to the top of its 100-year-old
lighthouse.
The 120-foot lighthouse, with its 170 worn wooden steps, is a great
vantage point for birders who come to see grebes, gannets, skuas and
the occasional shearwater or storm petrel on their migratory route
through Scandinavia. But it's also the best place to see one of the
world's largest offshore wind farms, Horns Reef.
Unfortunately, on cloudy days there's not much to see: The wind farm
includes 80 two-megawatt turbines, located 8.5 to 12 miles out in the
North Sea, and from a beach littered with German World War II
military bunkers it's an indistinct cluster of what appear to be
toothpicks sticking out of the water. As Bill Eddy (who accompanied a
Cape Cod delegation to Blavand) has observed, it "occupies only a
small portion of the horizon, perhaps 20 degrees....Horns Reef is
smaller than I thought."
Jan Toftdal of the Danish Tourist Board, who escorts visiting
journalists around his picturesque region, admits that the wind farm
was controversial when first proposed. The project went forward
without much local input, he says, and there was some concern it
would wreck the tourist-dependent economy.
"But now people are very accepting," says Toftdal, who has visited
Cape Cod as a guest of Cape Wind supporters. "We have not seen one
single tourist saying anything negative about it. There was recently
a survey of people on the beach, and the most common response was
‘What wind farm?' They just don't even see it."
The Cape-based Alliance has tried to spin this in another direction,
touting the views of "economic expert" Chresten Andersen, who told
Massachusetts audiences that it is "widely known" in Denmark that
wind farms are undesirable neighbors. But that would appear to be
contradicted by the facts on the ground in Blavand, where the tourist
economy is booming and housing prices are rising.
In her office in downtown Copenhagen, decorated by a scale model of a
Vestas turbine, Hanne Jersild of the Danish Wind Energy Association
shakes her head when asked about declining property values. "There is
simply no analysis to show an impact," she says. "When Horns Reef was
built two years ago, there was talk about it, but the opposition has
melted away." Now, she says, Horns Reef will be considerably expanded
with another 200 megawatts of wind power within two years. Thanks in
part to a "depowering" scheme that makes it advantageous to replace
older, less-productive turbines with more efficient models, Denmark
is likely to increase its wind capacity so that it can meet 25
percent of the country's energy needs by 2008. The Wind Energy
Association's goal is 35 percent of national needs by 2015.
In place of fear, there is now mostly optimism about this expanding
industry, particularly in an environmentally conscious country where
20 percent of all travel is by bicycle. "The development of the wind
industry here has been very rapid in the last 15 years," says
Jersild. "China is a big potential market for us, and we have large
markets already in Germany, Spain and Great Britain." Denmark is
becoming something of a specialist in offshore wind development. "The
marine environment is challenging, because of greater construction
costs for the foundations, and wear and tear on the equipment, but
offshore wind turbines are more productive," Jersild says. Thanks to
more persistent wind, "an offshore turbine typically produces some 30
to 40 percent more energy per kilowatt than an onshore turbine."
Peter Helmer Steen is associate director of Energistyrelsen, the
Danish energy ministry, and he says the government has encouraged
investment in wind research since the 1970s. The idea from the
beginning, he says, was that local ownership of wind turbines should
be encouraged, "so that you don't have windmills in Jutland owned by
investors in Copenhagen. We recognized that people who are
part-owners would be more willing to accept the noise and changes to
the landscape." More than 100,000 Danish families are members of wind
energy cooperatives, which have installed 86 percent of the country's
turbines.
Denmark is an energy exporter, with the capacity to produce 170
percent of its domestic needs. It sells North Sea oil on the world
market, surplus electricity to the Scandinavian countries (as much as
50 percent of production, says Steen) and natural gas to Sweden. Many
of Denmark's existing power plants are coal-fired (with coal imported
principally from South Africa), but the approximately 35 percent of
the grid dependent on coal is offset by 27 percent from renewables
(largely wind power, but also including biomass and electricity from
organic waste).
In addition to wind power, there are plants creating electricity from
biomass and straw, and an efficient cogeneration system that
distributes waste heat from power generation and incinerators to warm
more than 300,000 homes in Copenhagen alone. Denmark hopes to reduce
its greenhouse gas footprint 21 percent, in part through a carbon
dioxide emissions trading system that begins this year. "Perhaps
Denmark could be a model for the rest of the world in meeting the
Kyoto climate goals," says Steen.
Can Denmark really meet 35 percent of its energy needs with wind by
2015? "It depends on how rapidly we develop commercial offshore wind
farms," says Steen. "We want to see more competition for the contract
to deliver large-scale, 250-megawatt wind farms. Production costs are
decreasing rapidly [a 75 percent reduction between 1973 and 2003], so
it may be feasible."
For his part, Vestas CEO Svend Sigaard says that for the last dozen
years wind power has been surpassing the annual 20 percent growth
rate internationally, achieving nearly 35 percent growth. He admits
the U.S. market has been "quite low" because of the absence of tax
credits, and that most current North American Vestas projects are in
Canada. "The U.S. market over the last six years has been very on and
off," Sigaard says, "and it's difficult to plan for the fluctuations
in the regulations. But 2005 will be a better year for us in the
U.S."
Vestas has had some setbacks at Horns Reef, due to manufacturing
errors in transformers and other equipment (not built by Vestas) that
have needed on-land repairs. "We've learned quite a lot from the
experience," says Sigaard, who is cautiously optimistic about the
35-percent-by-2015 figure. "It's certainly possible, considering the
ongoing replacement of our smaller turbines and the 1,000 megawatts
in offshore projects that are under development," he says.
Not all of Denmark's offshore wind farms (it has eight) are in remote
locations. The Middelgrunden project, capable of producing 100,000
megawatt-hours of electricity per year, is located just outside
Copenhagen harbor, and consists of 20 two-megawatt turbines arrayed
in a two-mile arc. Far from a visual blight, it's actually hard to
see at all unless you find a rare high vantage point in this low-rise
city. But when you finally do get a look at it, the white towers
topped by gently spinning propeller-like blades present a visual
picture of environmental progress.
Objecting to Wind
The wind farm at Altamont Pass in California was a pioneer in U.S.
wind development, but it's in a migratory corridor and has raised
concerns about bird mortality.
- Warren Gretz / NREL
Like public transit, which is plagued by self-appointed "experts" who
try and stop every proposed project, wind power has opponents like
Glenn Schleede, a former senior vice president of the National Coal
Association. His mantra: Wind power equals huge machines producing
very little electricity. Wind advocates, he says, greatly
underestimate "the true cost of wind energy, as well as the adverse
environmental, ecological, scenic and property value impacts."
But the American Wind Energy Association answers him point by point.
"The cost of electricity from new wind plants is competitive with the
cost of new conventional power plants, when the federal wind energy
production tax credit is taken into account," the association says.
"It is true that few wind plants would be built without this
incentive. But it is also true that the traditional energy industries
[including nuclear and coal] are generously subsidized in a variety
of ways."
Do wind farms affect property values? Not according to a 2003 study
by the Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP). The group gathered a
large database and examined more than 25,000 property transactions.
"If there were any systematic harm to property values from wind power
projects, it would have shown up in the data," says REPP Research
Director George Sterzinger. In the majority of transactions, property
values actually rose in the period studied.
The libertarian Cato Institute complains that wind power is "not
cheap and not green." It charges that renewable energy is, on
average, twice as expensive as "the most economical fossil-fuel
alternative," meaning dirty coal. But such estimates fail to take
into account the cost of health effects caused by polluted air and
global warming.
Another charge is that wind power is intermittent, and therefore not
as dependable as fossil-fuel energy. In California, says Cato, wind
power operated at only 23 percent of its average capacity factor.
Cato compares that to nuclear power, with a 75 percent average
capacity factor. But to make wind energy appear inefficient it's
necessary, again, to ignore the external costs of nuclear power
production -- including storing nuclear waste and protecting nuclear
plants from 9/11-style attacks. Pacific Gas and Electric forecast in
the early 1990s that wind could ultimately become the least-expensive
electricity generation source. The cost of wind energy is also
dropping faster than the cost of conventional generation, AWEA says,
about 15 percent with each doubling of installed capacity worldwide.
Wind opponents, when they're not creating facsimiles of how bad
offshore wind projects will look, point to the fact that birds
collide with wind turbines. This is indeed tragic, but cell towers
and other obstacles are a large part of the problem. A Western
EcoSystems Technology report points out that as many as a billion
birds are killed by collisions with manmade structures annually in
the U.S. alone.
Although as many as 40,000 birds die annually after hitting
windmills, and that's a significant number, some 60 to 80 million die
from colliding with vehicles, and as many as 980 million from hitting
buildings and windows. Communications towers take out four to 50
million birds a year, and power lines kill many thousands more. The
Exxon Valdez oil spill killed an estimated 375,000 to 500,000 birds.
Further, newer, slow-moving turbines "are designed to provide little
perching and no nesting structure," the report says, reducing bird
proximity.
The Center for Biological Diversity says that wind turbines at the
Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA) in California, which is
located on a major bird migratory route with high raptor density,
"kill more birds of prey than any other wind facility in North
America." Estimates range from 800 to 1,300 raptor deaths annually.
But even the litigation-prone Center isn't proposing to shut
Altamount down. Instead, it proposes that "turbine owners take
reasonable measures to reduce bird kills and adequately compensate
for impacts to imperiled bird populations."
Altamont was installed in the early 1980s, and wind developers have
since become considerably more bird-friendly, designing less-lethal
turbines using repellant devices and colors, and placing them away
from migratory routes.
Also of concern is the issue of bat collisions with wind turbines, a
phenomenon that has not received sufficient study. A 2003 report
based on observations at the Buffalo Ridge Wind Resource Area in
Minnesota (354 turbines operated by Xcel Energy) concluded that 849
bats were killed in 2001 and 364 in 2002, for an average of 2.16 per
turbine per year.
Wind-Generated Hydrogen?
Can zero-emission wind power be used to produce hydrogen for fuel
cells as part of a completely clean energy loop? There's some
evidence that it can.
According to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, the Bush
administration's plans to use nuclear power to generate hydrogen are
off base, and wind power presents a better option. "Electricity from
wind is currently four cents per kilowatt-hour," the group says.
"This is a verifiable, experienced cost. Wind energy and photovoltaic
systems coupled to electrolyzers used for hydrogen separation are
perhaps the most versatile of the approaches and are likely to be the
major hydrogen producers of the future." Princeton researcher Joan
Ogden, a booster of solar and wind-based hydrogen, adds that nuclear
hydrogen is dependent on "difficult technology that is much further
from commercialization than many other hydrogen-production options."
There are, however, certainly realistic obstacles to overcome before
wind-based hydrogen can become a reality. A report by Science for
Democratic Action concluded that "there are no real cost advantages
to integrating fuel cells into the electricity system on a large
scale." Bill Leighty, director of the Leighty Foundation in Juneau,
Alaska, has some sobering second thoughts on the idea of transmitting
large amounts of wind-generated electricity via a hydrogen pipeline
from North Dakota, for example, to Chicago, a possibility examined in
a study underwritten by his foundation.
Mega-projects like this wind farm in Palm Springs, California can
reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Environmentalist Lester Brown
calls wind power "the missing link in the Bush energy plan."
- Warren Gretz/NREL
"Hydrogen transmission does not appear to offer an economically
attractive alternative to gigawatt-scale transmission of Great Plains
wind energy via high-voltage [electric lines] because of the extra
costs of conversion from electric to hydrogen energy at the Great
Plains source," said a key sentence in Leighty's paper. "Capital,
operations and maintenance, and energy conversion loss costs are
significant, though energy storage as compressed hydrogen gas in the
pipeline is a valuable benefit."
Leighty says wind-generated hydrogen is dependent on what the
Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter describes as "the emergence of a large
market for pure hydrogen...for [fuel-cell-based] transportation and for
distributed generation."
But what if that market does develop? Claus Moller of the Danish Wind
Energy Association says that the concept of hydrogen from wind is
being actively pursued in Denmark, with small-scale demonstration
projects and long-term feasibility studies underway in research
institutes. If economics of scale come into play to dramatically
reduce the cost of wind-powered hydrogen electrolyzers, reports a
paper by Harry Braun of the Hydrogen Political Action Committee
posted on EV World, then electricity could be generated at a cost of
one cent per kilowatt-hour, resulting in liquid hydrogen produced for
the same cost as gasoline at $1.95 a gallon.
Braun calls for 12 million wind systems to be mass-produced and
installed within 24 months and coupled to an interstate hydrogen
pipeline. "It is possible for the U.S. to be energy independent, with
a pollution-free and inexhaustible energy resource within five to 10
years," he says.
The Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown offers a plausible scenario
for wind-based hydrogen. "Surplus wind power can be stored as
hydrogen and used in fuel cells or gas turbines to generate
electricity, leveling supply when winds are variable," says Brown.
"Wind, once seen as a cornerstone of the new energy economy, may turn
out to be its foundation. The wind meteorologist who analyzes wind
regimes and identifies the best sites for wind farms will play a role
in the new energy economy comparable to that of the petroleum
geologist in the old energy economy.
"With the advancing technologies for harnessing wind and powering
motor vehicles with hydrogen, we can now see a future where farmers
and ranchers can supply not only much of the country's electricity,
but much of the hydrogen to fuel its fleet of automobiles as well.
For the first time, the United States has the technology and
resources to divorce itself from Middle Eastern oil."
An Unlimited Future
As the fastest-growing source of energy in the world, with the fewest
long-term drawbacks, wind power would seem to have an unlimited
future. Lester Brown describes wind power as "the missing link in the
Bush energy plan." Bush has called for the addition of 393,000
megawatts of electric generating capacity by 2020, and he's proposed
financial aid to businesses that construct new nuclear power plants,
as well as streamlined plant licensing. But no nuclear plant has been
ordered in 30 years, and mammoth financial incentives may not be
enough to offset the huge waste and liability questions.
But Bush's generating goals could be reached with wind power alone.
Just three Great Plains states -- North Dakota, Kansas and Texas -- have
enough wind potential to meet America's entire energy needs. Farmers
and ranchers support wind projects because of the financial boon that
comes with leasing their land. Wind projects completed just in 2003
will generate $5 million annually in payments.
Wind energy designers are starting to think big. A project called
Rolling Thunder, in South Dakota near the Iowa border, would generate
3,000 megawatts when it comes online in 2006, making it five times
larger than any previous wind farm and one of the largest energy
developments in the world today. At the same time, the federal
Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) says it will buy 830 megawatts
of wind power from seven plants -- five to be built in Washington and
two in Oregon. Already the nation's biggest supplier of hydroelectric
power, BPA will be the largest wind energy supplier.
The pieces are in place for a massive expansion of wind resources
worldwide at a time when concern about oil supply and location is
proving to be massively troubling. All the signs are positive, but
will wind power achieve its true potential? The answer, of course, is
blowing in the wind.
JIM MOTAVALLI is editor of E.
CONTACTS
Danish Wind Power Association
Phone: (011)45-3373-0330
Clean Power Now
E-mail: http://www.cleanpowernow.org
Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound
Phone: (508) 775-9767
American Wind Energy Association
Phone: (202) 383-2500
Cape Wind Associates
Phone: (617) 904-3100
Wind Energy Projects
http://www.awea.org/projects/index.html
End of forwarded message from Fidyl <fidyl@yahoo.com>
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
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http://www.hindu.org
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The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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