A new study suggests wind power is cheaper to produce than coal or natural gas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
A new study suggests wind power is cheaper to produce than coal or natural gas. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.
The report from Stanford University shows creating electricity using wind power costs about three and a half cents per kilowatt-hour. That compares to coal and natural gas costs of almost four cents per kilowatt-hour. Mark Jacobson is an engineering professor at Stanford, and the author of the study. He says the government needs to pursue using more wind power over coal and natural gas.
“ …and also, wind energy is more efficient than solar, or other renewable energy sources. So all of the renewable energy sources, you would want to exploit wind first.”
Jacobson says wind power is even a better deal when the environmental costs of pollutants from coal and gas plants are taken into consideration. But there is a downside. To convert two thirds of the nation’s coal generated electricity to wind power would take an up front investment of more then 330-billion dollars. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.