World Wind Turbines To Cross 300,000 Megawatt Mark
Wind turbines are here to stay. They are increasing in numbers every day, and industry figures show that the amount of energy they are able to generate has reached tremendous levels.
The 19th century belonged to coal, the 20th to oil, and the 21st century belongs to clean energy, with wind energy being one of the foundations of that.
“This is the big one, the centerpiece, the dominant source of energy in the new economy is wind,” believes Lester Brown, a world-leading environmental analyst.
Jobs are steadily improving with the wind industry as well. Here’s one uplifting example: Jeff Metz was not a Green. He was a Republican in Michigan, the state hit the hardest in the recession. But he is a clean energy hero. He re-hired someone for every job that was eliminated (during the recession) to work for his wind manufacturing company. He tuned into what the industry needed, and in doing so, brought jobs back to the jobless. Problems with energy subsidies and tax breaks in the US are still disturbing (in need of attention). The wind industry was particularly attacked by Republican congresspeople in the past year or so, despite local-level support for wind power by common Republicans. It’s worth noting that these problems turned this hardworking and enterprising entrepreneur from Republican to something else. He is voting differently now.
Let’s get to the 300,000 megawatt (MW) or 300 gigawatt (GW) story noted in the headline.
Peter Sennekamp, media officer for the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), says: “Worldwide installed wind power will exceed 300 gigawatts of power capacity this year.” The projection is based off of data collected by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
For a little more fun, the following video by Peter Sinclair and accompanying short article by Thomas Schueneman emphasize why wind is becoming an essential agent of change. The “Century of Wind Energy” is upon us. Wind power prices have dropped dramatically. Current prices make it competitive with all sources of energy. As Schueneman, Metz, and Brown believe, wind is the cornerstone of the new energy economy.
This is a paradigm shift, and it is also an economic shift capable of bringing jobs and the US middle class back at a highly needed time. And what a great video capturing all that!
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“Three states — North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas — already have enough wind energy to fuel the whole country.” This doesn’t make sense as written. Perhaps they have enough potentially exploitable wind energy to meet total US energy demands on paper, or (less plausibly) you could reach this target by generalizing their wind installation rate to the whole country, Neither scenario is remotely efficient – you need to optimise renewables state by state, then transmit balancing power long distance.
I also had to do a double-take on that poorly written sentence – the word “already” makes it even more misleading. I suspect she meant it in the potentially exploitable way as you interpreted, but who knows what that comparison even means? All energy, or all current electricity consumption? With statements like this, enviros constantly discredit themselves. Better to just leave it out if you can’t clearly explain it.
hey, guys. well, i found the quote. it was a quote from Lester Brown in that video above. but it’s not clear what he was specifically referring to. it sounds like what Cynthia wrote… but that obviously doesn’t make sense. so i just removed the line.
Thanks for your quick reply, Zachary. This speaks well for your attention to credibility. Years ago I edited and cowrote a series of publications about the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, so I know how important it is not to exaggerate. I am mostly impressed with the quality on cleantechnica, so keep up the good work. One recent exception was a horribly misinformed piece on flying cars (link below), that I commented on extensively. I’m sure there’s a difficult balance between getting contributors to write good stuff, vs. oversight and fact-checking, but for me that item undermined cleantechnica credibility.
In a constructive crit mode, is there any chance you could put a good search utility on the site? Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems inordinately difficult to find particular articles or writers (such as one of my faves, Ronald Brakels).
Aerocar puff piece: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/11/have-you-ever-wanted-a-flying-car-video/?utm_source=Cleantechnica+News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=edb66032e0-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b9b83ee7eb-edb66032e0-331970261
World should celebrate the day the Wind energy crosses 300,000 MW milestone.
The 1st turbine that the Danish engineer created has 22 KW capacity, over the years the wind turbines have slowly grown to MW scale and a company in Norway is developing 10 MW turbine with a different design.
http://www.swayturbine.no/
Meanwhile similar turbines were developed on the tidal front (sub marine) by 3 companies. Hope this will give a big boost.
http://www.marineturbines.com/SeaGen-Products/SeaGen-S
http://www.atlantisresourcescorporation.com/media/news/1-latest/187-atlantis-resources-corporation-completes-testing-of-the-ar-1000-tidal-turbine-at-narec.html
http://www.hammerfeststrom.com/products/tidal-turbines/hs1000/
Great!
It always amazes me how wind development projects have always come up against such harsh resistance. Harnessing the power of the wind, such an incredible source of renewable energy, is the future. However, when up against lobby groups acting on behalf of gas and electricity companies, wind power faces very strong opponents. When governments start to understand that the needs of people come before already profitable organizations, only then can the stability of wind projects continue. For more information take a look at http://www.energyadvantages.com/
Hi. There. Yeah. 300,000. Megawatts. Or. 300. Gegawatt