Common Ground: Tilting At Windmills

July 2007 | Green Scene

Tilting At Windmills

One of the world’s cleanest energy sources confronts a nuclear enemy

By Paul Constant

As anyone who has ever road-tripped past a windfarm well knows, those acres of turbines spinning in the free breeze are a sure sign that the winds of change are a-brewing.

For Pascal Storck, president of 3 Tier Group, a Seattle-based alternative energy efficiency company, wind-powered electricity is the future. At the recent American Wind Energy Association conference in LA, “the AWEA put forth the ambitious goal of wind producing 20 percent of America’s power by 2020,” says Storck. “It’s an entirely feasible goal, and it would be tremendous for America.”

Wind power — a sustainable solution to many of our power woes — is the world’s fastest-growing energy source. This bodes poorly for nuclear power, which sees wind as its main industry competitor. Nuclear lobbyists would have you believe that wind farms can only be used to solve regional energy problems — and it’s true that wind power used to be constrained by geography. While the wind does not blow equally powerfully in every state in the union, even Washington, which falls in the middle as the 24th windiest state, has nearly one thousand wind farms in operation.

As Storck points out, the main regional constraint is not a lack of wind — but rather a lack of public support for wind energy. “Germany leads the world in both solar and wind power, and Germany’s not a particularly sunny or windy place,” says Storck, adding there’s probably more wind-power in your region than you’d expect.

Another sticky challenge to the future of wind farming is the accusation that turbines kill birds and bats. While this worry has stymied many a wind farm plan from winning public support, experts agree the problem is more public perception than animal reality. The National Audubon Society recently put its full support behind wind power, stressing that while work on offshore and other solutions is absolutely critical to reduce aviary death, dirty energy sources and global warming are responsible for exponentially more deaths — of fish, fowl, and every other living thing — than any amount of turbines could ever cause. And scientists are working on creating ultrasound devices that would keep bats at a safe distance from a turbine’s whirling blades.

California, a notable early world leader in wind energy thanks to the massive wind farms at Altamont Pass and elsewhere, still leads the nation in wind harvesting, but the rural plains states are catching up quickly. Offshore sites are also becoming popular for wind harvesting. They can be at sea or in more landlocked areas — both the United States and Canada are building wind farms in the Great Lakes. To find out how the wind is blowing in your neck of the woods, enter your address at firstlook.3tiergroup.com for a wind power assessment in your region. “It’s exciting to see how much energy you can produce,” says Storck. “And the results are usually surprising.”

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