The government's Recovery Act spending led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
2009 was a bumper year for new
windmills. But Mark Brush reports,
if it weren’t for government money,
it might have been a bad year:
Transcript
2009 was a bumper year for new
windmills. But Mark Brush reports,
if it weren’t for government money,
it might have been a bad year:
Companies normally have to borrow money from banks or investors to build big wind projects. And money was tight last year.
But the government stepped in with Recovery Act spending. It led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes.
Even with government spending, experts say there’s still a lot of uncertainty in the wind business. The wind industry says the federal government should set mandatory goals for renewable energy. That way utilities will know what to expect over the long term.
Denise Bode is the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association.
“That kind of assurance sends a signal to a utility that they need to diversify their portfolio. That it’s in the public interest. And that gives them the support they need to go and make 20 and 30 year decisions. Right now, most utilities are making very short term decisions.”
A lot of the growth that happened last year happened in states that required a certain percentage of their power come from renewable energy.
In this study, researchers wanted to see what it would take to increase wind energy enough that it could provide 20% of power for the eastern United States.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
A new study says wind power
could meet 20% of
the energy needs of the eastern
United States. But to get there,
the nation needs to invest in a
lot of infrastructure. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
A new study says wind power
could meet 20% of
the energy needs of the eastern
United States. But to get there,
the nation needs to invest in a
lot of infrastructure. Samara Freemark reports:
The study was released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s a federal lab that develops green technologies.
Researchers wanted to see what it would take to increase wind energy enough that it could provide 20% of power for the eastern United States. What they found was, we need a lot more transmission infrastructure.
David Corbus worked on the study. He says transmission lines would connect turbines offshore and in the Midwest to cities on the east coast.
“You have to get all that wind energy to where people can use it. So you have to build a lot of transmission. Which can be difficult to build.”
Difficult, and expensive. Corbus says those investments could cost more than fifteen billion dollars. But he points out that that’s actually a relatively small amount compared to the total that the nation spends on energy.
The lab will release a similar study on the western states in a few months.
A single wind turbine can change air currents, creating dangerous winds for birds and other airborne wildlife. (Photo by Michael Tyas)
Monitoring radar and thermal imaging for signs of migrating birds or putting sensors on turbines are some ways to lessen a turbine's impact on birds.
(Photo by David Orsborne)
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity in the United States. For some environmentalists, that’s
good news. Wind turbines don’t spew smoke into the air. There’s no nuclear by-product. But there is an environmental risk. To see it, you have to view the wind turbines through the eyes of a bird.
The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity in the United States.
For some environmentalists, that’s good news. Wind turbines don’t spew smoke into the
air. There’s no nuclear byproduct. But there is an environmental risk. To see it, you
have to view the wind turbines through the eyes of a bird. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer
has more:
Chandler Robbins has spent a lot of time studying how birds kill themselves. He says he
would go out on windy nights to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He’d
stand at the bottom of the 555 foot tall obelisk and watch the birds at the top:
“Just as they get to the tower, they just go around the edge of it and bang, the turbulence
from the winds going around the tower, sweeps those birds against the tower, and they’re
killed.”
Speaking at a conference, Robbins tells the crowd he once watched more than 500 birds
slam into the monument in one night, and that monument is standing still. Now imagine
wind turbines, some of them about as tall as the Washington Monument, with spinning
blades that reach nearly a football field in diameter.
Alex Hoar is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says a single turbine can now
change air currents for three acres around the turbine itself:
“So, if you put up a hundred turbines, the blades are sweeping 300 acres. So, that’s a large
space. And what we don’t know is when are birds and bats at risk.”
We don’t know because no one has really studied it. Both Alex Hoar and Chandler
Robbins say scientists know a lot about where birds take off and where they land. They
know about migration patterns, but they don’t know about what birds do, or where they
go while they’re in the air.
So, with more wind farms being built across the country, it’s not clear what affect they
might have on bird populations, but some suspect it won’t be good. Peter Kailing works
with an environmental consulting company. He recently did an environmental impact
study for a new 47 hundred acre commercial wind farm in Michigan. He says scientists
can learn a lot from the wind farms that have already been built. He says the ones that
have done the most damage to wildlife have a few things in common:
“The turbine was in a narrow valley, or a mountain-pass, or on the edge of a large
water body with steep wooded cover that was used by migrating songbirds, there’s almost
always a topographical association.”
Weather also plays a role. Peter Kailing and others say that birds tend to avoid cloud
banks by flying under them. That could put them in the path of turbine blades. So, one
way to limit damage would be to shut the turbines down on cloudy days.
Chandler Robbins says better technology could also limit damage. He says turbine blades
could be equipped with sensors:
“If a bird or a bat collided with that blade, it would set up enough vibration so that the
blade could be feathered temporarily to avoid other birds striking until the immediate
problem is over.”
Feathering essentially means that you twist the angle of the blade so that wind passes
over it, rather than pushing the blade into a spin. That way, birds aren’t sucked into it.
It’s basically the turbine’s braking system. Some say you don’t even need a sensor on the
turbine. They say engineers could monitor radar and thermal imaging. That would tell
them if any migrating birds are in the area, and if they are, feather the blades.
Of course, the absolute safest solution in the short term might be just to stop building
wind farms, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks that’s a good idea.
Most seem to realize that any way of making electricity will have some impact on the
environment. The question is what can be done with each of them to minimize the risk.
With wind energy, that work is just getting started.
Kelvin Potter on the third floor of the house he's building with scrap lumber. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
Kelvin Potter and Nate Reed gathered logs that would have been turned into firewood or woodchips. They cut them and pieced them together to make a timber frame three-story house, much like barns were made 150 years ago. From the basement to the roof the house is cheaper, stronger and less damaging to the environment. (Photo courtesy of Kelvin Potter)
Nate Reed and a fellow builder, Brandon Alioto. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally friendly house. The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Transcript
One man and a few of his friends are using some old-fashioned methods
and some cutting edge techniques to build an environmentally-friendly house.
The builders are also using a lot of material that other people would throw
away. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Four men are raising a timber frame house on an old farm
in central Michigan. Several feet up in the air, they’re piecing together
some beams, 12 feet long and 12 inches thick with some help from a small
crane.
(Sound of engine)
“Cable it! Cable it! Cable it? Yes!”
(Sound of tool dropping)
The framing is like assembling giant Lincoln Log toys. Neighbor Nick
Van Frankenhuyzen is holding a rope attached to some beams.
“Look at that. Look at how far that is extended. We lifted one of
those beams yesterday by hand and they’re not light. Now this wall has to
come back. This has to pop out again to make that one fit and I don’t
know how that’s gonna happen.”
Facing these kinds of challenges is what people in the green building
movement seem to relish. Kelvin Potter owns this farm. He’s using materials
that most builders overlook.
Potter: “Yeah we saved all these timbers, developers were burning all these.
So. These were all going up in smoke. And some of these logs came off my
neighbor’s property. They had died and were standing. We dragged ’em over here. He planted them. He’s
standing right there.”
Van Frankenhuyzen: “Yeah we’re standing on them. And then Kelvin
said I sure could use them. Because they’re the right size. Go get ’em. So he did. And here they are. Can’t believe it. Much better than firewood.”
Kelvin Potter’s home is one example of a growing trend in green building.
The U.S. Green Building Council includes 4000 member organizations. It’s
created standards for protecting the environment. The standards include
reusing material when it’s possible, using solar and wind energy, renewable
resources, and non-traditional materials. Sometimes from surprising
places.
(Sound of truck)
A city truck dumps wood chips onto a municipal lot. On other days it
dumps logs like sugar maple, oak and pine. The trees came from routine
maintenance of parks, cemeteries and streets.
Kelvin Potter is also here, checking for any fresh deliveries. While other
guys come here to cut the logs with chainsaws for firewood, Potter says he
makes better use of it as flooring or trim. Even saw mills don’t take advantage of this kind of wood. That’s because
trees cut down in backyards often mean trouble for the mills.
“Sawmills typically aren’t interested in this material because there is
hardware, nuts, bolts, nails, clothes lines, all sorts of different things
people have pounded into them by their houses. ”
Potter says sawmills use big machines with expensive blades that get
destroyed. So THEY throw the logs away. Potter instead keeps the logs and
throws away his blades. He uses cheap ones, making it worth the risk.
When it’s finished, Kelvin Potter will have an environmentally friendly
house, even if it doesn’t meet all the criteria to be certified as a “green
building.”
Maggie Fields works for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
She says there are many ways to build green. Anything that helps the
environment is a big improvement on the status quo.
“Every material that we reuse is a material that doesn’t have to be cut
from the woods, if that’s where it’s coming from, or remanufactured. And that means that the pollution that’s associated with that material getting
to that use state isn’t having to be created. So, it doesn’t matter if they
get the green seal. If they’re taking steps along that that’s great.”
(Sound of climbing ladder)
Kelvin Potter is climbing a ladder to the belfry of his new house. He
shows off his shiny steel roof, the kind now covering barns. He compares it
to asphalt shingles.
“It lasts 100 years versus 15, 20 years. We actually fill a lot of landfills with shingles. They don’t compress. They don’t decompose. Steel will
go right back into making more roofing or cars or what not. It’s a win-win
situation. It’s a lot cheaper all around and I can’t see why it’s not a lot
more popular.”
The point Potter and other green builders are trying to make is, good
building material isn’t just the stuff marketed at lumberyards. They say, “Look around. You might be surprised what you can use.”
The government's Recovery Act spending led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
