Photo: Background: Brent Winebrenner/Getty Images; Swisher: Joshua Roberts
Wind power is no longer just a boutique [energy] source,” says Randall (Randy) Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). “The 35 percent of new electric generating capacity provided in 2007 made it the No. 2 source behind natural gas. So wind has become a big-time contributor to the electric power sector, and yet we’ve only just begun.”
Swisher has employed his own considerable energy in telling the American public about wind power, arguably one of the most promising items on the list of renewable-energy sources, for nearly 20 years.
The efforts of Swisher and his colleagues paid off handsomely last year. The 5,244 megawatts of wind power generated in 2007 represent a 45 percent jump in the nation’s wind-power capacity, the largest increase ever in a single calendar year. As AWEA announced in January, “The new wind projects … will power the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually while strengthening U.S. energy supply with clean, homegrown electric power.”
Modern windmills, the high-tech offspring of their storied predecessors in Holland and elsewhere, harness the power of wind by using a two- or three-blade fan-shaped turbine atop a 100-foot tower (to catch faster, less turbulent wind). The captured power is then transferred by electrical lines to power grids in mega-operation locales such as California, Iowa, Texas, Minnesota and Washington, the nation’s leading wind-power producing states; or used directly to power standalone applications such as water pumps or communications equipment.
Wind has two great advantages over natural gas: It’s emissions-free (which addresses the problem of climate change) and, once the turbine is up and running, the price of wind never changes. Even though wind accounts for just 1 percent of U.S. electricity supply today, Swisher says it is very much a growth industry. “We see decades of double-digit growth in front of us and the potential for this industry to provide for 20 percent of this nation’s electricity within the 2030 time frame. That’s the goal we’re focused on. The projection makes sense in terms of the resource. There’s an enormous wind resource in this country—multiple times the electric need.”
Growth in the wind-power sector also has the potential to create—or recover—jobs, a fact not lost on state government officials. “A bunch of states have figured this out and now have wind-focused economic-development strategies,” Swisher notes. “We’ve received very strong support at the state level, especially compared to the federal government. Twenty-five states have developed renewable-energy standards for their electric utility. So it’s a very exciting story.”
Fueled in part by environmental concerns and (in many areas) comparatively low costs, business is booming. “The cost of a wind project is determined by a number of factors,” says Swisher. “However, when you look at what’s happening to the cost of fuel, such as natural gas, when you compare the cost of competing technologies such as coal and nuclear, wind looks good on a cost-comparative basis over the next few decades. [The United States] is the largest market for new wind turbines in the world right now, and will be again in 2008.”
This is not to say that wind energy is a silver bullet for both the environment and the economy, or that it is an option in every geographic area. Compared with Texas, California and the Great Plains, states such as Alabama and Mississippi are wind-challenged. Plus, wind turbines are not necessarily cheaper to build than generators that burn fossil fuels; wind power can’t be easily or inexpensively stored and it refuses to blow on command.
A lack of firm federal support also could significantly slow the advancement of the wind-power industry. “Over the last decade, here in the U.S., we’ve had a wind-production tax credit [historically the main federal incentive for building wind-power systems] that’s been allowed to expire three times,” explains Swisher. “If this country intends to take full advantage of that potential, it’ll get its act together in terms of establishing a stable policy of support that will signal to manufacturers interested in doing business in the U.S. that there will be stable policies here that will allow them to recover the millions of dollars in investment that they will need to make to build those factories.”
Factories—and the companies who manufacture the turbines, such as GE Energy and Siemens—aren’t the only things deserving of incentives, Swisher says. The suppliers of blades, towers, generators and gearboxes also need to be considered for both federal and state support.
Swisher also openly admits that some people just don’t like the look of the wind turbines. Take the Cape Cod Wind Project, for example. The project includes 130 wind turbines to be built offshore in the Nantucket Sound. If successful, they will provide three-fourths of the Cape and Islands’ electricity needs. For many Cape Codders, though, the loss of pristine ocean views outweigh the benefits to wind energy. Likewise, residents in western Maryland recently won a four-month battle against the state, which had hoped to clear-cut 400 acres and erect about 100 wind turbines in the Potomac and Savage River state forests. Residents argued—successfully—that the project would spoil the landscape and lower property values.
“If you think about the environmental impact of this industry, I think the single most significant impact is the visual impact, because these machines are large,” Swisher says. “You do see them, and they do have an impact on the landscape. As for noise, I have actually slept on a wind farm and I didn’t hear a thing all night, but they can, if you are very nearby, emit some sound, and I think for that reason it’s important there be setback, probably at least 1,200 feet for residential areas. So there’s a trade-off.”
Swisher realizes that, even as the need for and interest in wind power grows, there will always be those who are against it. “There’s no free lunch,” he says. “There is no way of generating electricity that is absolutely impact-free.” But he quickly adds, “Wind power is an issue whose time has come.”
