Understanding Energy

The concept of sustainability and environmental protection is beginning to accrue significant attention in the media and public interest, especially in light of the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. However, I am a tad skeptic about the transparency of the average person’s interest and dedication to ‘going green’. One of the major problems I am seeing is that many people don’t fully understand how reliant our country has become on fossil fuels, continuous access to electricity and clean water. It is sad to realize that most of us don’t even appreciate the technological advancement that has allowed us to simply flip a switch to illuminate our room, or plug in our cell phone without thinking of where this energy is coming from and how awesome it really is that we can get energy from our wall to power a device that can transmit messages around the world in near real time.
What I have recently realized is that often when one expects the general public to make a significant or maybe not so significant change in their life style for the betterment of the planet and its natural beauty is that, unfortunately and depressingly, the majority of people have not truly seen nature in its beauty and have grown up so immersed in societal development, financial advancement materialistic needs. I foresee difficulty in the future of energy and resource management in the united states due to the fact that we are asking people to make major life style changes to save something they have not yet had the chance to fully appreciate. It is imperative that the next generation is raised with a deeper respect and appreciation for our planets excellence.

The need for a better understanding of our energy future can be divided into two main categories. The first is the understanding of where and how our energy is generated/converged and where it could possibly come from in a more sustainable manner. The second need is in developing an appreciation for that energy and learning how we can minimize our consumption without significantly hindering the conveniences of modern technologically driven living. This blog is aimed at investigating and exploring how and why we have faced so much resistance in spread of knowledge and action regarding sustainable energy alternatives to our current infrastructure. It is important that the public has as unbiased and accurate understanding of these energy sources if they are expected to be involved in the necessary transformation for a sustainable future. We will begin by looking at each individual energy resource and attempt to foster discussion and debate on the subject of why some of these have or have not been adopted and to what scale they have. In our opinion the future energy infrastructure cannot depend on a single source and it will likely be a complex mixture of all available resources. The weighting of each energy source will depend on location, energy transfer, resource potential, state and local government perspectives and individual residential investments.

I will first present a simple assessment of wind energy and the issues that challenge its widespread implementation:

The potential for industrial scale wind power in North America is vast and significantly underutilized and appreciated. The United States generated a combined 4,000 billion kilowatt-hours in 2007 from fossil, nuclear, hydro and less than 1 % other renewables. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) the total potential energy that could be generated via wind turbines is 10,777 billion kilowatt-hours annually, more than twice the U.S. current production rate. With this said the question arises why is our current supply of electricity from wind less than 1% of our total generation at only 32 billion kilowatt hours. The United States is currently harnessing less than ¼ of a percent of the total available energy from wind. The problem facing the proliferation of wind turbines in the energy sector can be broken into three main categories, Capital investment, lack of necessary transmission lines and the intermittency intrinsic to natural weather patterns.

Constructing a wind farm requires permitting on land that not only has a high energy potential but it must be deemed an acceptable location by the local public and government. Added to these criteria are the large capital investments associated with the turbine, the supporting tower, the blades, the base and as well the necessary infrastructure to operate and maintain the facility. This can lead to quite the expenditure; however as has been demonstrated by many successful wind farms in Texas and California wind generated electricity can be sold for 5 cents per kWh in ideal locations when local and regional government are in support of the investment. For example lets look at the iconic giant wind turbine, some of the largest blades are over 80 meters with towers over 110 meters tall! These colossal components require special handling, licensing, and lots of money to transport. However the bright side of this is that with the installation of new wind farms jobs, there will be a vast need for labor if wind power is to make a dent in the national energy generation. Rather than building these machines overseas as is currently the case it makes economic sense to manufacture and assemble them locally, adding value to the communities and regions where there farms will stand for decades to come.

Wind being natural phenomena does not adhere to a set schedule or calendar, which means that unlike coal and nuclear power plants wind will have a more difficult time matching production with demand. Consider the case when wind is gusting at night, people don't need much electricity at night. If wind is going to be a big player our energy future a new method of capturing all the potential energy from the wind must be employed. This means either very large storage capacities or very large interconnected transmission grids, both expensive infrastructure investments. Already nighttime power prices are dipping to zero in some markets which results in wind turbines being idle at night since there is no reason to induce added wear on them if they are not generating a profit. When the grid is too full to accept more electricity, regardless of how much a turbine is capable of making which has the affect of devaluing wind energy compared to on-demand plants.

A secondary and no less important issue arises when considering wind energy, that of the location of consistent and powerful wind. The majority of the ‘wind rich’ proposed sites are often hard to reach or geographically isolated from energy consuming areas. The country's best wind resources, like those in the Dakotas and West Texas, aren't connected to population centers where the large demand for power is concentrated. In order to make use of this energy resource more transmission is needed, which costs more money, new transmission lines don’t come cheap, and can cost well over $1 million per mile. The issue of transmission is one of the major road blocks in the growth of large scales wind energy, many people are proponents of turbines as long as they are out of sight and don’t disrupt the natural view that many are accustomed to.

One method of dealing with the economic issues associated with developing a large scale renewable wind farm is the use of government supported incentives or tax-credits. In some case incentives such as the Wind Production Tax Credit motivate the choice for a community to choose wind energy over coal fired power plants. “The PTC provides an incentive of two cents per kilowatt-hour generated to facilities that produce electricity from renewable energy resources…The credit can be claimed for 10 years, beginning on the date the qualified facility is placed in service.” Without these tax credits, building the manufacturing infrastructure for large-scale wind turbine projects can be very difficult because the current availability of cheap and dirty electricity from coal.