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Wind power
The Boston Globe
TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2005
In the early 1970s, before Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, before anyone was worried about climate change, the Danes decided to harness the wind, and not the atom, to generate much of their electricity. Today, the design and production of state-of-the-art windmills is this small country's biggest industry. As most of the rest of the world seeks to slow down or reverse the production of greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel power plants, Denmark provides an example of one way to make electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.
In the United States, electricity generation accounts for about 40 percent of all greenhouse gases. That share will increase if plans in the next decade for 100 new coal-burning plants are not revised. China and India also plan to build hundreds of new plants burning coal, which produces more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels. The resulting increase in CO² will greatly exceed the reductions in greenhouse emissions planned by the countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol.
Wind, the world's fastest-growing form of electricity production, deserves consideration in the United States and elsewhere as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuel power.
Many residents of Nysted and Denmark's west coast, where the offshore wind farms are located, initially opposed the projects, fearing their effect on tourism and housing values. Even onetime opponents now admit that the turbines have not had an impact on either.
Denmark shows both the pluses and minuses of wind power. The great advantages are that it relies on a source - wind - that costs nothing and emits nothing. There are two major disadvantages: Wind power production depends on fickle weather, and building and installing wind turbines is expensive.
A grid with wind turbines - Denmark now gets almost 20 percent of its power from wind, and its Wind Energy Association is aiming for 50 percent by 2025 - needs backups for days when the wind doesn't blow or blows too hard.
Denmark's way to compensate power producers for the high capital cost of wind is to guarantee a firm like Energi E2, which is managing the Nysted wind farm in the Baltic Sea, a 10-year price of about 7 cents a kilowatt hour. Fossil-fuel power in Denmark costs about 5.3 cents. The economics for wind could become even more positive if the growing demand for fossil fuels in countries like China, India and Brazil drives up their cost. Taxing carbon emissions or capping them, as the McCain-Lieberman bill pending in the U.S. Senate would do, would help make wind power preferable to coal, the lowest-cost fuel, even if wind power companies were obliged to post bonds for the cost of any future dismantling of the turbines, as they should be.
The uncertainties surrounding fossil fuels make wind look like a conservative hedge bet for a future that could put a premium on nonpolluting power sources.
In the early 1970s, before Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, before anyone was worried about climate change, the Danes decided to harness the wind, and not the atom, to generate much of their electricity. Today, the design and production of state-of-the-art windmills is this small country's biggest industry. As most of the rest of the world seeks to slow down or reverse the production of greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel power plants, Denmark provides an example of one way to make electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.
In the United States, electricity generation accounts for about 40 percent of all greenhouse gases. That share will increase if plans in the next decade for 100 new coal-burning plants are not revised. China and India also plan to build hundreds of new plants burning coal, which produces more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels. The resulting increase in CO² will greatly exceed the reductions in greenhouse emissions planned by the countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol.
Wind, the world's fastest-growing form of electricity production, deserves consideration in the United States and elsewhere as a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuel power.
Many residents of Nysted and Denmark's west coast, where the offshore wind farms are located, initially opposed the projects, fearing their effect on tourism and housing values. Even onetime opponents now admit that the turbines have not had an impact on either.
Denmark shows both the pluses and minuses of wind power. The great advantages are that it relies on a source - wind - that costs nothing and emits nothing. There are two major disadvantages: Wind power production depends on fickle weather, and building and installing wind turbines is expensive.
A grid with wind turbines - Denmark now gets almost 20 percent of its power from wind, and its Wind Energy Association is aiming for 50 percent by 2025 - needs backups for days when the wind doesn't blow or blows too hard.
Denmark's way to compensate power producers for the high capital cost of wind is to guarantee a firm like Energi E2, which is managing the Nysted wind farm in the Baltic Sea, a 10-year price of about 7 cents a kilowatt hour. Fossil-fuel power in Denmark costs about 5.3 cents. The economics for wind could become even more positive if the growing demand for fossil fuels in countries like China, India and Brazil drives up their cost. Taxing carbon emissions or capping them, as the McCain-Lieberman bill pending in the U.S. Senate would do, would help make wind power preferable to coal, the lowest-cost fuel, even if wind power companies were obliged to post bonds for the cost of any future dismantling of the turbines, as they should be.
The uncertainties surrounding fossil fuels make wind look like a conservative hedge bet for a future that could put a premium on nonpolluting power sources
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