• A lot of people -­ and not just wind industry representatives, either ­- believe that wind energy is and will remain an increasingly crucial part of our national renewable energy portfolio. No one had anything particularly negative to say about nuclear or other non-c02-emitting power generation technologies, but all agreed that of those other options, none were as ready as wind power was to step up to the plate and work. (It takes years and years to bring a nuclear power plant online, for instance, and not nearly as long to build and permit wind turbines). The wind industry feels that its golden moment is now.
• The AWEA has set a really tough goal for itself and for the wind industry: to produce 20% of the U.S.' power by the year 2020. As good as that sounds, no one really knows how it's going to be accomplished. Panelist Bob Lukefahr, of BP¹s alternative fuels division, stressed the challenges: It will require "technology we haven't invented yet," he said, and entails "political and economic complexity this business has never faced before." For starters, they're going to have to figure out how to deliver all that energy; even if we had the turbines to do it right now, it would cost at least $60 billion to build the transmission lines to get that power onto the country's grid, according to AWEA President Randall Swisher.
  
• The future of the wind industry depends on the White House, and if the next few presidents we have aren't wind-friendly, wind will stay small for the long haul.

The good news is, there are plenty of states out there interested in having the wind industry set up shop in their regions. At Monday's confab alone, the mayor of Los Angeles and the governors of Montana and Iowa made nice to the assembled windustryites, and at least one congressman (D.C.'s own Jerry McNerney) and a senator (Tom Daschle) lent their support to the cause as a whole. In short, the industry is booming, consumer interest in renewable energy has never been higher, and the future ­ depending in part on what happens in the 2008 election ­ looks bright.

Comments (7)

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written by joe , June 05, 2007

Does she come with the wind turbine?

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written by Hank , June 06, 2007

Dude... she is the wind turbine.




OK...i have no idea what i mean by that

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written by Bob , June 06, 2007

Forget having wind farms that require $60 billion in new transmission lines. Put your farms where they can tie into existing lines. The more distributed our generation is the better it is for security. A turbine in every yard and a chicken in every pot!

every yard?
written by John , June 07, 2007

> Put your farms where they can tie into existing lines

It generally works better to put the farms where the wind is.

> A turbine in every yard

My yard isn't very windy.

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written by Bob , June 07, 2007

There are plenty of windy places near existing lines. John, try to be more optimistic.

cute
written by ninj4 , June 08, 2007

She spins me right round baby right round...

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written by Rob , June 11, 2007

Beautiful thing about wind is that you're all right. Distributed production is great for small purposes, and utility scale production is necessary for urban centers and for reliable energy infrastructure. There's also some new technologies that are able to improve power production in lower wind areas that might otherwise not warrant the cost of development. Exciting times-

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