Wind Could Provide 100% of World Energy Needs

Damien1972 sends in a report on a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which finds that wind power could provide for the entire world's current and future energy needs. "To estimate the earth's capacity for wind power, the researchers first sectioned the globe into areas of approximately 3,300 square kilometers (2,050 square miles) and surveyed local wind speeds every six hours. They imagined 2.5 megawatt turbines crisscrossing the terrestrial globe, excluding 'areas classified as forested, areas occupied by permanent snow or ice, areas covered by water, and areas identified as either developed or urban,' according to the paper. They also included the possibility of 3.6 megawatt offshore wind turbines, but restricted them to 50 nautical miles off the coast and to oceans depths less than 200 meters. Using [these] criteria the researchers found that wind energy could not only supply all of the world's energy requirements, but it could provide over forty times the world's current electrical consumption and over five times the global use of total energy needs."

Comments

An interesting counter-article

[dougsyo]

I was looking for a quote about "open mouth, change feet" - completely unrelated to this topic - just a few moments ago, and ran across this post that really fits:

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/salazars-wind-power-first-open-mouth-then-change-feet/

The summary of the numbers in that article (replacing US coal-burning plants with offshore east coast windmills):

So, we have, just for the towers nacelles and fans:
- A workforce of 170,000 people, just to work at the plants to construct them.
- 120 huge factories to construct.
- Wind towers every 375 feet for the whole length of the Atlantic Coastline and stacked 38 rows deep.
- Construct those towers, nacelles and fans at the rate of one every 8 minutes for 40 years, in the Atlantic Ocean.
- $10.4 Trillion in today's dollars (conservatively).

It gets more ludicrous than that, when you consider continental shelf, keeping shipping lanes open, etc.

Admitted, adding on-shore windmills would be more doable, but still - it is quite pricey and impractical.

Doug

Re:Impact on birds...

[jfdawes]

Some wind turbine designs are far more bird friendly than others. The standard "propeller" based designs tend to be pretty bad. Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (Pac Wind and Helix Wind) can be much more bird/bat friendly.

Re:Wind Could NOT Provide 100% of World Energy Nee

[MichaelSmith]

Single Wire Earth Return is a standard way to distribute electrical power to remote places in my country. The current density in the return path is very low because the medium which carries it has a high cross sectional area.

Lets say the cable going one way carries 1000 Amp with a cross section of 0.1 square metres. If the return path uses 100 square metres the current density would be 1000th of that in the cable.

Re:tourism

[quenda]

I thought it was the copious amounts of marijuana that made Amsterdam a compelling destination. LOL!

You must be real fun at parties, explaining the punchline of every joke.
If that gets "insightful" moderation, I just want everybody to know that water is wet. (Or is that informative?)

Re:But...

[Anaerin]

What will lubricate the turbine bearings?

Polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE for short (AKA Teflon®).

how will we paint the machines?

Soy/Rapeseed(canola)/nut-based oil pigment paints

how will be mine the materials that go into these things?

Mine? Use electric power. Though you could also recycle! 10,000 drinks cans = 1 turbine nacelle (Note: Completely wild guess, but you get the idea)

how will we make the fiberglas?

Glass-Reinforced Soy-based plastics? Carbon Fibre?

without oil?

There are already solutions to all your problems.

Re:overstated or misunderstood wind turbine proble

[mh1997]

The NIMBY crowd would be more than happy to Luddite civilization into the stone age, and then complain about the lack of affordable power. Californians are the worst at this -- in the US, anyway.

You mean like Senator Ted Kennedy (www.boston.com):

...But, it turns out, Kennedy's antipathy to furtive rules changes and backroom power plays stops at the water's edge -- specifically, the waters of Nantucket Sound, which separates Cape Cod (where the Kennedy family has an oceanfront compound in Hyannis Port) from the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. A shoal in the center of Nantucket Sound is where Cape Wind Associates hopes to build the nation's first offshore wind farm -- an array of 130 wind turbines capable of generating enough electricity to meet 75 percent of the Cape and Islands' energy needs, without burning any oil or emitting any pollution. The turbines would be miles from any coastal property, barely visible on the horizon. In fact, Cape Wind says they would be farther away from the nearest home than any other electricity generation project in Massachusetts.

But like a lot of well-to-do Cape and Islands landowners and sailing enthusiasts, Kennedy doesn't want to share his Atlantic playground with an energy facility, no matter how clean, green, and nearly unseen. Last month he secretly arranged for a poison-pill amendment, never debated in either house of Congress, to be slipped into an unrelated Coast Guard bill. It would give the governor of Massachusetts, who just happens to be a wind farm opponent, unilateral authority to veto the Cape Wind project.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/07/kennedy_doesnt_play_by_the_rules/

Is that supposed to be a joke?

[TapeCutter]

"It seems to me we'd have to rape the earth in a way most of us would consider fairly extreme to erect giant concrete towers on every square meter of ocean and land. The ecolgical impact of billions of tonnes of raw materials being mined [to build windmills] would be astronomical."

We already mine and BURN over six billion tons of coal a year, That's one ton of coal for every man, woman and child on the planet.

Why does common sense and reason go out the window when people post on these stories? It's got to the stage where I feel like I'm arguing with young earth creationists.