Past wind farm deployments and advances in the wind energy sector have worked to open up new areas primed for future deployment. As tower heights rise from 50 meters to 80 meters above the ground, turbine can capture more wind captured at one time (higher wind speeds are usually present away from the ground) as well as during more parts of the day.
The result is that instead of 7.4-8.4 m/s wind speeds, new turbines can capture 8.5-10 m/s winds (see map below (gif source & pdf). This translates to a 1.2 cent reduction per kilowatt-hour of wind energy: 10.8 cents, down from 12.0 cents. My utility currently charges 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour of energy. The utility’s energy mix as of 2010 was: 61.31% coal, 26.88% natural gas, 10.26% wind, ~1% rest). They are also filing for a 5.99% increase in electricity charges.
Unsurprisingly, the cost of wind continues to fall as deployment accelerates and R&D is performed. This happens while corporate welfare for dirty energy still dwarfs the subsidies for clean energy. It is remarkable that the renewable energy sector grew at the rate it has while it has faced a relatively hostile policy environment. Imagine what the clean energy industry (and our environment) would look like if we were serious about it 40 years ago.
I’ll have more of my thoughts on this kind of news going forward. Transitioning from 61.31% coal, 10.26% wind and 0.29% solar to a clean energy-dominant mix will prove incredibly difficult, for instance. Some good policies have been implemented to help that happen, but I wonder if the scope of the problem has been accurately assessed.
[...] because they “have failed to live up to their supposed potential.”
I’ve never been a fan of Lamborn. Up to this point, I haven’t been much of a critic either since he’s just another example of a privileged white male who thinks the 1650s were the best time in history. Why waste my time on another idiot Teabagger? But this request is batshit insane and I won’t ignore it. Seriously, Rep. Lamborn, what the hell are you thinking?
Actually, I know what Rep. Lamborn is thinking. He’s thinking of the miniscule campaign contributions that he’ll have to take from the dirty energy corporations to help get him re-elected. Because $31,750 in his account is worth more to him than 5,500 highly skilled, well-paid Americans or the $714 million boost to Colorado’s economy that NREL provides (yes, he sells out Coloradans for less than a luxury vehicle. awesome.). As a wild-eyed ideologue, those hard numbers don’t mean a thing. Because his ideology says he needs to whore himself out to corporations on the cheap.
Rep. Lamborn would rather: wreck the stable climate our species has evolved in; keep Americans deployed across the world ensuring regions remain unstable enough to paradoxically justify their deployment; we remain enslaved to carbon-based power using a system that’s over 100 years old instead of de-centralizing and de-carbonizing.
But if you thought the above quote was lunacy, wait until you read this one:
The letter, written by California U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, says: “We should not follow the president’s poor planning in increasing the funding for these anti-energy boondoggles.”
What in the world is an anti-energy boondoggle? Perhaps the biggest problem with Republican Teabaggers is because they’ve never been forced to think things through clearly, they live in a world where stringing together talking points sounds good to them. Built on top of this problem is the corporate stenographer problem: do Yesenia Robles and The Associated Press think simply parroting this insipid quote qualifies as doing their job? Apparently so. The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions/occupations? No, those weren’t boondoggles. NREL is a boondoggle according to McClintock and dutifully parroted by Robles and the AP. The ease with which our democracy is subverted is nauseating.
[Update]: I sent the Post article to a friend. This is part of their reply (I wish I had thought to write it):
Let’ see, where could we begin with NREL’s future impact analogy?…..how about the Internet (NSF), wireless technology (DOE), Polio vaccine (NSF-DHS).
While it’s true that NREL’s potential hasn’t been fully realized as of today, just imagine if we had listened to idiots like Rep. Lamborn in the past. There are good reasons why 1650 wasn’t such a great time.
The last time NREL completed a similar analysis was back in 1993. Almost 20 years later, much has changed. Turbine heights can be significantly higher today. Technological efficiencies have increased. And their ability to accurately map wind energy potential has undergone significant improvement.
Back in 2000, ~2.5GW of wind energy was hooked up to the nations’ grid. As of last year, that total increased to an impressive 35GW. That’s after 8 years of a right-wing cabal running the country that had for more passion for Saudi oil than domestic wind. Those 35GW are enough to power 9.7 million U.S. households. As impressive as that 35GW might be, the new estimate of total available wind energy is stunning: 10,000GW!
I would highly recommend going to their maps link. Click on your state; click on the High Plains states. Unsurprisingly to anyone who lives or has driven through the High Plains, it’s windy here. There is enough wind potential from North Dakota down through western Texas to power this entire country’s electrical needs.
The only thing missing is a national-level effort to harness this opportunity. With fewer renewable resources available to them, you can see why states in the southeast continue to fight hard for dirty energy corporations. They don’t see the imminent threat that climate change presents to them, which is a tragedy for the entire country. Enough is enough from dirty energy. Wind power, only one of many renewable forms of electricity, can provide all the electricity the entire country uses many times over. It’s time to make a smart switch.
One rich person’s plan to address our nation’s energy policy has garnered huge media attention recently. I’m not talking about Al Gore either. I’m talking about T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire who made his money in the oil sector. He outlined his plan to reduce oil imports by at least a third in 10 years. Which sounds like a laudable goal, right? The goal sounds good. How he plans to get there is insane. He’s only tackling part of the energy problem we face. What is totally ignored has the potential to completely dwarf our energy problem: climate change. I’ll say this as many times as is necessary until people really get it: a 20-foot rise in sea levels will displace billions of people worldwide. If we think our current set of geopolitical issues are large, wait until governments have to deal with those kinds of numbers.
Here’s the part of Pickens’ plan that I like: build enough wind farms to supply 20% of the nation’s electricity by 2020. That’s a solid goal that is completely achievable, but only if we as a country decide that it is. There are big challenges along the way, certainly, but that should motivate us to act instead of intimidating us into submission.
Here’s the part of Pickens’ plan that is ludicrous: replace oil with natural gas as an energy generating source. Why would we trade a bad carbon source with a slightly less bad carbon source? Why not move directly and immediately to a near-zero carbon source? Part of the problem: replacing oil infrastructure with natural gas infrastructure. As I mention above, this could have the benefit of emitting less carbon overall into the climate system, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. How long do we then use natural gas as an energy source? Until all the natural gas is similarly used up? Then we face the dilemma of being forced to adopt renewable energy sources.
Or we could skip the middle step and move directly to renewable energy infrastructure. We face enough obstacles in enacting renewable energy as our predominant and eventual sole source of energy. Let’s tackle that problem now while we have some crumbs of time left before we irrevocably tip the climate system to a state we can’t recognize.
It honestly worries me that a billionaire oilman is pushing a plan that is getting so much corporate media attention. It makes me wonder what other monied interests are silently getting behind the plan, while more viable plans are cast aside. These kinds of business plans (really, that’s all it is) neglect critical science issues. I think that’s a bad idea.
*****
Also in the news: a group of Republican Representatives will visit the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO this Friday the 18th of July. Which is very interesting because those same Representatives voted to cut NREL’s budget when they controlled Congress. NREL came very close to losing enough funding to prevent it from doing its work: researching alternative energy and efficiency projects. Only when a sizable number of scientists were about to be laid off due to funding issues and was pushed hard in local media did Republicans restore funding they had taken away from the lab.
The Republicans are characterizing their trip as reflective of their “all of the above approach” they push for in Congress. Which is a bald-faced lie and should have been reported as such. No such luck from our corporate media, of course. Democrats are not standing in the way of responsible energy policies. They recognize that this country cannot drill its way out of the energy problem that demagogued activists have been warning would come along for decades.
Republicans are going to continue to act like they’re moving toward renewable energy solutions to avoid inspection of their failed energy policies of the last generation. These are the people that gleefully brought us $140 oil, never forget that.
