The anti-wind farm crowd, which of course includes the coal-industry folks who want Delaware instead building polluting smokestacks, say that the wind power is unreliable. Some say the wind turbines will be an eyesore. Environmentalists worry about birds being killed by them.
Let's knock down those theories one, two, three...
The photo above is a wind farm sited just 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) off a shoreline in the U.K. The Delaware windmills, however, will be sited six miles offshore. "You probably wouldn't be able to tell what they are," said Jim Lanard, a spokesman for the company proposing the Delaware windmills.
The one and only environmental concern with wind turbines in the Mid-Atlantic region was laid to rest recently with release of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report indicating that a minute fraction of total bird deaths caused by human activity was less than 0.003% - that 3 of every 100,000 birds were killed by wind turbines. National Audubon Society President John Flicker (what a ironic name!) is a wind energy supporter who also points out the greater threat presented to birds with global warming. "A major scientific study in 2004 concluded that global warming, if left unchecked, could lead to the extinction of more than one million species of plants and animals by 2050", he said.
As far as the claims of wind power being unreliable, consider what Jim Bacon tells us about Virginia's wind power. This is a great article explaining that "[s]everal miles off Virginia's coast the winds are strong and reliable -- classified as Class 5 and Class 6 winds, ideal for power generation." Bacon talks about not only wind energy but also wave energy, and a synergy of the two all potentially happening here in Hampton Roads! But it's not "researchy" - meaning there's no money nor political will to support these initiatives.
Says Hagerman (an electrical engineering professor with Tech's Advanced Research Institute in Arlington): "With the right kind of roadmap and research supporting that roadmap, you could start with today's offshore wind technology, then down the road, go [into] deeper [waters], then add wave energy, then produce liquid fuels offshore. A super combination would be combining offshore wind and wave, which are intermittent, with liquid fuels from marine biomass, which could run a gas turbine -- all with one cable to the shore."Hagerman's full-blown scenario may sound pie-in-the-sky, but the wind farms are not. The Europeans are pushing applications -- wind blades the size of Boeing 747s, wind farms miles offshore -- that once seemed unimaginable. The Germans, British, Spaniards and Scandinavian countries are moving aggressively, driving technological improvements, creating economies of scale and making wind-power increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. Forecasts call for Germany to nearly double its wind-farm capacity by 2030, with almost all of the growth coming from off-shore installations. The U.S. lags five to 10 years behind.
Here's a fun video giving one good insight into what's involved with these wind turbines.
So, Thelma Drake, why are you so dead set going after this...
when we could instead have this instead?
