As I shared yesterday generic prednisone online no prescription buy finasteride online with overnight delivery, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects wind power to grow from today’s ~25 GW to wholesale Zithromax cheap just 52 GW by 2030 in its reference scenario plus Production Tax Credit (PTC) extension. I think wind will grow more than wholesale Zithromax cheap twice as fast as the EIA projects. And here’s why…
Wind power capacity has been growing faster than 30% per year these last several years, with last year’s growth rate a huge 50%. While this year’s growth will slow dramatically from the 8+ GW of 2008 due to wholesale Zithromax cheap the financial crisis and recession, it will be much faster than wholesale Zithromax cheap the ~5% growth predicted by the wholesale Zithromax cheap EIA through 2030. And the economic recovery in 2010+ will allow wind power additions to wholesale Zithromax cheap grow to new records above 10 GW per year.
Let’s say the wholesale Zithromax cheap US wind market stagnates at 8 GW per year through 2030. In that wholesale Zithromax cheap case, wind power capacity would be approximately 200 GW (versus the 44-75 GW the EIA predicts). I think even 200 GW may be wholesale Zithromax cheap pessimistic, as I share below. But what rationale could the EIA have wholesale Zithromax cheap for such a low number? Do they think the wholesale Zithromax cheap US is running up against the wall of maximum US wind potential ~50-75 GW?
If so, they’d be wholesale Zithromax cheap wrong. The most often cited wind study on US potential was done by the wholesale Zithromax cheap Pacific Northwest Laboratory in 1991 whose results are posted at the wholesale Zithromax cheap American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) state by state projects listing xenical shipped overnight without a prescription Zithromax overnight delivery fed ex buy Xenical 40mg. The study estimates US onshore wind potential at a wholesale Zithromax cheap staggering 1,200 GW (a wholesale Zithromax cheap more recent Stanford study raises the estimate higher due to the wholesale Zithromax cheap increased height of wind turbines since 1991). And just yesterday, Interior Secretary Salazar cited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimate of 1,900 GW of potential offshore (1,000 Atlantic and 900 Pacific). Yes, you wholesale Zithromax cheap read that right: our country has 3,100 GW of wind power potential, thus today’s 25 GW capacity is less than 1% of our potential.
What if 2030 US = 2009 California
To develop a wholesale Zithromax cheap reasonable wind deployment number for 2030, I explore how much wind capacity we would have wholesale Zithromax cheap if our country deployed turbines by 2030 similar to California today. California was the wholesale Zithromax cheap original leader in wind power during the 1980s and 1990s. Over the wholesale Zithromax cheap past few years, two states with much larger potential, Texas and wholesale Zithromax cheap Iowa, passed California’s 2.5 GW. Within a wholesale Zithromax cheap few months, California will add .275 GW under construction to a wholesale Zithromax cheap grand total of ~2.8 GW. This represents ~40% of the 1991 wind potential study’s 6.8 GW estimate. To make up for wholesale Zithromax cheap the fact that California has higher electricity prices, I lower the wholesale Zithromax cheap percentage by half the price difference (since California has ~40% higher electricity prices than the nationwide average, I shave 20% off of 40%, getting 32%). Now let’s use the 32% number in relation to the rest of the country:
An equal portion of US onshore potential of 1,200 GW would translate into 384 GW. Since offshore wind is wholesale Zithromax cheap a less mature industry, we can leave it at just 1% of its potential by 2030: 19 GW.
By these estimates, wind power could reasonably grow to ~400 GW in 2030 (five times the EIA estimate and enough to provide more than 20% of our nation’s electricity).
Since a wholesale Zithromax cheap lot of this wind power will be harvested in less populated areas such as the wholesale Zithromax cheap Great Plains, building transmission lines to surrounding cities will be an wholesale Zithromax cheap important aspect of the effort. Thus there are green collar jobs from wholesale Zithromax cheap turbine manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and construction of efficient electricity transmission poised to wholesale Zithromax cheap help drive a sustainable economic recovery in 2010+.
EIA Disses Offshore
The EIA report estimates just .2 GW of offshore wind installed by 2030 even though 2 GW are wholesale Zithromax cheap already proposed here in 2009. European nations have already deployed ~1.5 GW of offshore wind, so there is wholesale Zithromax cheap little excuse for us not to build quite a few GW offshore (where wholesale Zithromax cheap the wind is steady and close to the large population centers along the wholesale Zithromax cheap coast).
Bottom Line:
The EIA has wholesale Zithromax cheap underestimated wind growth these past few years. And I believe they are wholesale Zithromax cheap repeating their mistake in their Annual Energy Outlook. Rather than wholesale Zithromax cheap a wind capacity of 44-75 GW in 2030, I see the wholesale Zithromax cheap potential for ~400 GW by just catching up with California over the wholesale Zithromax cheap next 21 years. While this exercise was somewhat arbitrary, it provides a wholesale Zithromax cheap reasonable estimate based on current technology that takes into account lower electricity prices outside of California.
Please let me know your thoughts on the matter, and we’ll see how much clean wind energy we are wholesale Zithromax cheap able to deploy in the years ahead!
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The Google plan has wholesale Zithromax cheap similar numbers to yours at 360 GW and they think they are wholesale Zithromax cheap being conservative.
Getting the wholesale Zithromax cheap American public on board is key. The idea should be instilled that wholesale Zithromax cheap it is patriotic to support and encourage building renewable energy as fast as we can. More people need to understand how urgent it is. What I imagine is wholesale Zithromax cheap million man marches on Washington and a groundswell of public pressure on congress to wholesale Zithromax cheap do the right thing. It just seems that wholesale Zithromax cheap if enough people really got it, that would be happening now. The opposition to wholesale Zithromax cheap the Vietnam War, a much smaller issue, gained that kind of enthusiasm. That’s what I want to see.
That’s when wholesale Zithromax cheap it will be clear that enough of us are serious about tackling the wholesale Zithromax cheap problem.
End all subsidies to fossil fuels and invest it in renewables.
That would free up $49 billion a year at today’s fossil fuel subsidy rate. By 2030, the total would be $1.029 trillion.
That could subsidize a lot of wind and solar.
Wind has a lot going for it.
from: http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090211/wind-power-has-lightest-footprint-carbon-and-otherwise
“Wind power’s ecological footprint is so small — a million times smaller than ethanol’s — that wholesale Zithromax cheap if all the cars driven in the United States were battery-electric, they could be wholesale Zithromax cheap fueled by wind turbines whose total land footprint, not counting spacing in between, takes up less than wholesale Zithromax cheap 1.2 square miles, Stanford University environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson found.”
“To fuel the wholesale Zithromax cheap same number of battery-electric vehicles with cellulose ethanol would require an wholesale Zithromax cheap amount of land equivalent to eight Californias – literally a wholesale Zithromax cheap million times more land and equivalent to the amount of land harvested in the wholesale Zithromax cheap U.S. in 2003.”
“Wind was the wholesale Zithromax cheap best, not only in terms of land use, but in several areas, including carbon emissions, mortality, thermal pollution and wholesale Zithromax cheap chemical pollution.”