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    FAQ

Wind Power Local Benefits

Wind energy provides a wealth of economic benefits from local job creation, to funding for schools. The energy is clean, renewable, reliable, and comparable to the electric cost from the local utility. Wind energy does not replace the local utility but provides a beneficial supplement by injecting the energy into the distribution or transmission lines to be shared by all.

When the wind is blowing, the utility automatically reduces its production from other energy sources. In many areas, this is primarily coal. When the wind isn’t blowing, the utility provides additional power to maintain the same electricity reliability that rate payers have always enjoyed.

Isn’t it time to reap the rewards from wind farms in your area? The choice is not wind or nothing—our society demands a large and steadily growing supply of electricity. If that electricity does not come from wind, it will come from some other source with almost certainly more damaging environmental consequences. The question we must all ask ourselves is: if not wind, then what? [source: www.awea.org]

The power in the wind……clean, inexhaustible, sustainable; and now economically harvestable. “The U.S. wind energy resource is huge – about two-and-a-half times the total electricity generation of the United States, without taking into account off-shore resources. The annual potential is the same order of magnitude as the total oil production of all the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.” Quoted from a study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, North American Energy Summit Western Governors’ Association Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 15-16, 2004 Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Peter Bickel, Ph.D. Professor of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley Aiyou Chen Graduate Student, University of California, Berkeley Brice Smith, Ph.D. Project Scientist, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

For the first time in history, wind turbines are producing electricity at prices that are competitive and in many cases lower than most other forms of generation. As stewards of our planet, all of us can help promote this resource as an inexhaustible alternative to dirtier forms of electricity generation. By actively purchasing electricity from the wind, promoting its benefits, educating our local government representatives, or helping in the development of wind farms, each of us can become those stewards. The long lasting environmental attributes and the regional economic benefits encourage us at Wasatch Wind along with our partners as individuals, investors, officials, and landowners of wind energy projects to say; “What else can we do to help produce clean energy for more communities?” We hope you have discovered the wealth of benefits from wind farms and are asking the same questions.

The adoption of wind energy in our country and the world is necessary as a multi step process in reducing fossil fuel consumption first in our power plants and then in our cars, trucks, and SUV’s. Fossil fuels burned to run cars and trucks, heat homes and businesses, and power factories are responsible for about 98% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. This continued dependence on coal, natural gas, and oil puts humanity in a perilous position. Like a drug, the economy depends completely on the continuing escalation of petroleum consumption while ignoring the risk of increasing world wide strife and the sickening of our air.

Wind farms produce no pollution... zero. In the Intermountain West where 96% of all electricity is produced from coal, the electricity from a wind farm offsets pollution from all coal plants in the system. In spite of the government’s subsidies to the coal industry to clean up emissions, coal plants continue to produce large amounts of pollutants. Nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides, and mercury are being emitted in ecologically damaging amounts even with modern day scrubber systems. Carbon dioxide, a green house gas and arguably the largest contributor to climate change is not being reduced at all under current government mandates. Left unchecked this continual rise in pollutants may have irreversible impacts.

Wind Energy and its Role in National Economic Stability and Security

Many petroleum experts agree that world oil production will peak within the next 10 years (see, for example, the Hubbert Curve and its many variants ), after which time the world may see production declines (as has long been the case in the U.S.) and steadily increasing oil costs, eventually leading to supply interruptions that will be disruptive for advanced economies.

This graph (often referred to as the Hubbert Curve) is based on an assumed ultimate recovery of conventional oil of 1,750 billion barrels and depicts alternative scenarios of production. The swing case assumes a price leap when the share of world production from a few Middle Eastern countries reaches 30%. This is expected to curb demand, leading to a plateau of output until the Swing Countries reach the midpoint of their depletion. At this point, resource constraints force down production at the new depletion rate.

These supply issues will be particularly troublesome for the US economy and national security. Great distances separate major US cities (as compared with Europe, for example), and suburban sprawl contributes to the inherent inefficiency of our transportation systems. US citizens consume huge quantities of energy for lifestyle needs, far exceeding that of citizens of other countries. Food supply issues aside, some third-world countries may be only ‘inconvenienced’ by a ten-fold increase on oil prices, where the US economy would be significantly impaired. Finding a truly independent replacement for oil and natural gas is thus already a critical issue for the United States.

While there is considerable disagreement on timing, we appear to have roughly 25 to 50 years to develop large-scale replacements for petrochemical products before energy supply issues pose insurmountable problems to energy and food supply requirements. We must use the remaining time and inexpensive energy sources wisely to create a sustainable human habitat for future generations. Given the huge investments of time and money required to develop a new, large- scale energy infrastructure, we have to start soon and we must choose the right path.”

www.hubbertpeak.com/midpoint.htm Campbell, Colin, 1996, “The Twenty First Century, The World’s Endowment of Conventional Oil and its Depletion”