| Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Wind could power the whole world: report
Credit: AFP | www.abc.net.au 11 September 2012 ~~
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
There’s enough wind to power the world many times over, according to a new study, but it would take massive investment that analysts say is not realistic.
As the world seeks to lessen its reliance on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are being developed as alternatives.
Contrary to some other recent studies, analysis of climate data in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates wind turbines could harness hundreds of terawatts of electricity, far more than is needed to power the globe, even when accounting for the interplay between the groupings of turbines in so-called “wind farms.”
To reach that maximum potential, according to study author Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, it would require 1.5 billion massive windmills to be installed on and offshore.
That’s far more than you would need to meet the world’s actual energy demands, but you would still need many millions more turbines than currently exist.
Even with substantial recent investments in wind power, “the total installed wind capacity worldwide is around 239 gigawatts,” or about 2.5 per cent of the world’s electricity consumption.
Jacobson, and study co-author Cristina Archer of the University of Delaware, envision a very different future.
He estimates it would take four million five-megawatt turbines – bigger than most currently in use – to power half of 2030’s energy needs.
“The world today produces 70-80 million cars every year. We only need four million turbines once every 30 years,” Jacobson reasons, arguing it was certainly feasible.
But experts were skeptical.
Not so easy
“If that was the main objective of the world to do this, you could probably do it. But it’s a question of how much do you spend on renewables compared to other priorities in society,” says Audun Botterud, an energy researcher for the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.
In addition to the economic investment, Botterud says the challenges of changing winds should not be underestimated.
“If you have a relatively modest amount of wind power, it’s relatively easy to manage that variability and uncertainty, but as you scale it up, it becomes much more challenging,” he says.
“Ideally, if you have some kind of storage device that can store electricity on a large scale, you could use that to store electricity when you have a surplus,” to use when the winds die down.
But “storage is still very expensive and it is kind of limited, how much storage you can build with current technologies.”
“On top of that you, have the cost of building out transmission lines” from windy areas to where the power is needed.
University of Colorado environmental policy expert Roger Pielke agrees, saying: “Speculative science can be enlightening, but it remains far from the practical world of energy systems.”
This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.
| Wind Watch relies entirely on User Funding |
 (via Stripe) |
 (via Paypal) |
Share:
[ Short URL: https://wind-watch.org/news/?p=27879 ]
