Surge of Enthusiasm Greets US Offshore Power Study
Carl Franzen
Contributor
AOL News (April 5) -- A new wind is blowing in, stirring up the scientific, media and business communities with its powerful implications for the U.S. energy supply: limitless, renewable, clean electricity that's capable of powering the entire Eastern Seaboard.
But where, exactly, would it all come from?
Right off the East Coast, according to scientists. That's where some 11 weather-monitoring stations are stretched out across 1,550 miles from Maine to Florida. At present, they're just collecting meteorological data, but imagine if each one had an electricity-generating wind turbine and all were connected to a single power grid by a giant undersea cable.
That's precisely the idea proposed by researchers from the University of Delaware and Stony Brook University in New York. Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their work has sent science Web sites and tech blogs into a rapturous tizzy.
"According to their model, there would never be a time when the wind wasn't producing some electricity," breathed an elated Scientific American. "And previous research ... has shown that offshore wind power alone could supply the needs of coastal states."
While wind exhibits a vexing variability in any single given site, it is remarkably constant across larger distances. With their proposal to connect windmills in different sites into one giant grid capable of collecting energy from the spots where it is windiest when it is windiest -- then storing it and distributing it to where it is needed -- the researchers have arguably created a system that does away with the key logistical obstacle in effectively harnessing wind power: namely, its inconsistency.
"Viewed from this perspective, the problem of unreliability goes away," Discovery News wrote.
The researchers also pointed out that previous studies have shown ocean winds to be much stronger and far more consistent than those blowing over land -- so strong and so consistent, in fact, that even two-thirds of the offshore wind power off America's northeastern coast could supply "all electricity, all light-vehicle transportation fuel and all building heat for the adjacent states, from Massachusetts to North Carolina."
But nobody had devised a technically feasible way of harnessing it -- until now.
"The technology's there, the materials are there, we have the willpower to reduce carbon emissions, we have a reliable power supply that doesn't lead to fuel shortage," Wired quoted Mark Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineer at Stanford University, as saying. "The next step is really to start implementing this on a large scale."
However, the cost of doing so -- an estimated $12 billion -- remains daunting, especially in the midst of the long, slow recovery from global economic recession. Furthermore, as proved by the bitterly contested efforts to erect wind turbines off the coast of Rhode Island and Cape Cod, many people remain opposed to wind power on environmental and public-health grounds.
Still, such concerns haven't deterred other countries from developing their own ambitious offshore wind-power systems.
On Monday, energy company Siemens announced it anticipates investments in the "high double-digit-million [euro] range," for a planned offshore wind-turbine production plant in England, according the Web site EVWind. The site also reports on two other large-scale investments made in the past weeks: 100 million euros ($135 million) from Mitsubishi for a new wind-turbine factory in northeast England, and a staggering 340 million euros ($459 million) from General Electric for erecting similar facilities in Britain, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
Meanwhile, the first Chinese offshore wind farm is set to come online by the end of the month, marking the official start of what could be the planet's single-greatest investment in wind power systems: By 2020, China will have poured a jaw-dropping $100 billion into at least three projects, according to an estimate by Technology Review.
In both China and Europe, wind power is seen more as a way of creating jobs, bolstering local economies and achieving energy independence, rather than being a moral or scientific imperative in reversing global climate change, as has often been argued in the United States.
In any case, the gross disparity between the U.S. and other countries in developing this energy sector has led to some unlikely agreement between very different organizations, such as the investment blog Money Morning and the nonprofit Pew Environment Group: Both have recently argued that the U.S. is falling rapidly behind when it comes to investment in a critical future technology.
Perhaps Bob Dylan, too, would agree. After all, he did sing, "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind."
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