POWERFUL WIND BLOWS THROUGH US ENERGY SECTOR

LONDON, 20 March, 2015 − The wind turbines are turning across America, and a majorreport by the US Department of Energy (DOE) says the wind energy sector now supplies 4.5% of the nation’s electricity.

Given the right energy policies and investment in infrastructure, that figure could increase to 10% by 2020 and to 35% by 2050, the DOE predicts.

That will not only benefit tens of thousands of workers who will be employed in one of the US’s fastest-growing industries. It’s also good news for the climate, and will help preserve increasingly precious water supplies.

“Deployment of wind technology for US electricity generation provides a domestic, sustainable and essentially zero carbon, zero pollution and zero water-use US electricity resource,” the DOE says.

Impressive growth

The rate of growth of wind power in the US has been impressive. In 2011 alone, nearly 3,500 turbines went up across the country. And the Natural Resources Defence Council says that a typical 250 megawatt wind farm − around 100 turbines − will create 1,073 jobs over the lifetime of the project.

The DOE says costs of wind power are dropping, while reliability and other issues are being sorted out. “Wind generation variability has a minimal and manageable impact on grid reliability and costs,” the report says.

Texas is the top wind power state, followed by Iowa, California and Oklahoma. At the end of 2013, the US had 61 gigawatts (GW) installed − up from 25 GW in 2009.

The aim is to increase those figures to 113 GW by 2020, to 224 GW by 2030, and to more than 400 GW by 2050.

The DOE says that if these plans are realised, the emission into the atmosphere of more than 12 gigatonnes of climate changing greenhouse gases (GHG) will be avoided.

“Wind deployment can provide US jobs, US manufacturing and lease and tax revenues in local communities to strengthen and support a transition towards a low-carbon US economy,” the report says.