Business | Opinion
Wind industry faithful must think bigger
Forget Chicago. Last week, Los Angeles was the Windy City. The wind-power industry's biggest players blew into the downtown convention centre, and their mission was not just to celebrate their soaring fortunes amid a nationwide green-energy boom.
- By Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 00:00 June 11, 2007
Forget Chicago. Last week, Los Angeles was the Windy City. The wind-power industry's biggest players blew into the downtown convention centre, and their mission was not just to celebrate their soaring fortunes amid a nationwide green-energy boom.
The wind-energy business in 2006 booked its second year of record growth, and executives are pushing the industry faithful to think bigger. Much bigger. By 2030, they want wind farms to supply 20 per cent of the nation's energy - a huge leap from today's contribution of less than one per cent.
"It's not a forecast, but it is a plausible scenario," Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, told attendees at the opening session of the group's Windpower 2007 conference.
Getting there won't be easy, he cautioned. "It requires a transformation of the electric industry and a whole number of things that we don't have today."
The most crucial of those needs: an extension of the federal production tax credit that has helped make the United States the fastest-growing wind-power market.
That on-again, off-again credit is set to expire at the end of next year.
Other obstacles include the rising costs of wind turbines and other equipment and a shortage of electrical transmission lines to carry wind energy to the power grid. Then there's public concern about noise, the danger to wildlife and visual intrusion caused by the rows of giant white wind turbines that typify wind farms.
In addition, an energy bill backed by Rep. Nick Rahall, requires the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to create standards for siting, building and monitoring wind projects to prevent unnecessary harm to birds and bats that might fly into the spinning blades.
Nonetheless, wind energy's popularity has soared. Enthusiasm for it is only slightly damped by its inability to produce power full time. Governments around the world are counting on wind energy to help cut carbon emissions, which play a major role in global warming.
"We basically have between now and 2020 to get emissions globally to peak and to start to decline, or we run a serious risk of climate systems spinning out of control," said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, based in Belgium.
"The next 15 years are critical, and wind is in the best position."
Wind farms can be built relatively quickly, have little or no harmful emissions, don't gulp down water or require mining or drilling, and, with incentives, are relatively cheap compared with other renewable power technologies.
Homes and businesses in less urban areas can do it themselves, contributing to brisk growth in the use of relatively small wind turbines.
California had been the nation's wind-power leader, with 2,376 megawatts of production capacity. The state last year lost its top ranking to Texas, which has 2,739 megawatts of wind-energy capacity, Energy Department statistics show.
The wind industry added 2,400 megawatts of capacity across the United States last year, putting the nation's total wind-energy capacity at nearly 11,700 megawatts.
Experts predict bigger increases this year, with wind farms generating 31 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity - enough to power nearly three million average homes, according to the US wind-power trade group.
That surge was visible at this week's annual convention. Organisers said attendance jumped to a record of nearly 7,000 people, and companies were so eager to participate that the exhibition floor space was expanded three times leading up to the show, said Thomas Gray, deputy executive director of the American Wind Energy Association.
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