Note 99% of the land is still available for sheep etc. This will
create wealth in windswept barren lands, once we get grid capacity at
300% we will be able to limit use of dwindling oil and become
Note a nuclear plant generates 1,000gw but the british govt has now
to guarantee $100 per mwh for wind vs $80 for wind generated
electricity showing nuclear is no longer competitive
In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of
energy and avoid runaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead
on both solar and geothermal energy. Solar panels, with a capacity
totaling 70,000 megawatts, and geothermal power plants, with a
capacity of some 11,000 megawatts, are generating electricity around
the world. The total capacity for the world’s wind farms, now
generating power in about 80 countries, is near 240,000 megawatts.
China and the United States are in the lead.
One reason wind power is so popular is that it has a small footprint.
Although a wind farm can cover many square miles, turbines occupy only
1 percent of that area. Compared with other renewable sources of
energy, wind energy yield per acre is off the charts. For example, a
farmer in northern Iowa could plant an acre in corn that yields enough
grain to produce roughly $1,000 worth of fuel-grade ethanol per year,
or he could use that same acre to site a turbine producing $300,000
worth of electricity each year.
Because turbines take up only 1 percent of the land covered by a wind
farm, ranchers and farmers can, in effect, double-crop their land,
simultaneously harvesting electricity while producing cattle, wheat or
corn. With no investment on their part, farmers and ranchers can
receive $3,000 to $10,000 a year in royalties for each wind turbine on
their land. For thousands of ranchers on the U.S. Great Plains, wind
royalties will one day dwarf their earnings from cattle sales.
One of the obvious downsides of wind is its variability. But as wind
farms multiply, this becomes less of an issue. Because no two farms
have identical wind profiles, each farm added to a grid reduces
variability. A Stanford University research team has pointed out that
with thousands of wind farms and a national grid in a country such as
the United States, wind becomes a remarkably stable source of
the 238,000 megawatts of generating capacity at the end of 2011 would
expand to nearly 5 million megawatts in 2020.
This energy restructuring would require roughly 300,000 wind turbines
per year over the next decade. Can we produce those? For sure. Keep in
mind that the world today is producing some 70 million cars, trucks,
and buses each year. Many of the wind turbines needed to back out
fossil fuels in electricity generation worldwide could be produced in
currently idled automobile assembly plants in the United States alone.
The plants would, of course, need to be modified to shift from
automobiles to wind turbines, but it is entirely doable. In World War
II, Chrysler went from making cars to tanks in a matter of months. If
we could do that then, we and the rest of the world can certainly
build the 300,000 wind turbines per year we now need to build the new
energy economy and stabilize the climate.
For the first time since the Industrial Revolution began, we have an
opportunity to invest in alternative sources of energy that can last
as long as the Earth itsel
The world’s current 70,000 megawatts of photovoltaic installations
can, when operating at peak power, match the output of 70 nuclear
power plants. With PV installations climbing and with costs continuing
to fall, cumulative PV generating capacity could surpass 1 million
megawatts in 2020. (Current world electricity generating capacity from
all sources is 5 million megawatts.) Installing solar panels for
individual homes in the villages of developing countries is now often
cheaper than it is to supply them with electricity by building a
central power plant and a grid.