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.
Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:
Transcript
A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:
Say you want to make some money putting up windmills. You need a place with lots of wind, lots of open space, and lots of people who will want to buy your power.
It turns out, Nantucket Sound off the east coast is an ideal setting.
Jim Gordon first proposed the Cape Wind Project in 2001. The windmills would be as tall as 40 story buildings. And could power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
“Look, it’s not a question of Cape Wind or nothing. It’s a question of Cape Wind or a new nuclear plant or a new coal plant, or a heavy oil fired power plant.”
And that’s where people on Cape Cod get their power now – a power plant that burns oil. Boats making deliveries to the power plant have spilled oil into the water.
Jim Gordon thought it was a no-brainer. Replace dirty power plants with clean renewable energy.
But his plan ran into a bunch of opposition from rich and powerful people.
Roger Whitcomb wrote a book on the Cape Wind Project. Whitcomb said at a recent lecture that a lot of the opposition came from names we’re all familiar with – the Kennedys, the duPonts, and the Mellons.
“Most of these people were summer people. And they basically just didn’t want to look at these wind turbines, or the way they thought would look, because many of them had actually never seen a wind farm or a wind turbine. But they didn’t like the idea of anything violating the visual integrity of their horizon.”
There’s also some opposition from fisherman, some Indian tribes, and some locals who live on the islands. But Whitcomb says the bulk of the money for the fight against the Cape Wind Project comes from the rich and powerful.
Right now, those groups are challenging environmental reviews and permits in the Massachusetts Supreme Court. All these legal challenges – all these permitting hoops – put a damper on big projects.
Roger Whitcomb says we used to be a people who thought big. But that’s changed.
“It’s very difficult to do anything in the United States anymore. We’re way behind everybody else. This isn’t a can-do country anymore. There’s been a huge change. This is not where things are done.”
Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan.
And despite all the legal and political barriers, it looks like the country is closer than ever to seeing its first ever offshore wind farm built.
There’s a lot of popular support for the project in the region.
Ken Salazar heads up the Department of Interior. He told us this past spring he expects projects like Cape Wind will go forward.
“You know I expect that it will happen during the first term of the Obama Administration. I think that there is huge potential for wind energy off the shores of especially the Atlantic because of the shallowness of those waters.”
Siting big wind farms is a new kind of battle in this country. In some cases – like the Cape Wind project – energy development is moving closer to the wealthy.
Ian Bowles is the Secretary of the Energy and Environmental Affairs Department for the State of Massachusetts:
“Many of the dirty fossil plants of a generation ago were sited in cities and many times in environmental justice areas where there’s lower income residents. And I think today, you’ve got in many ways you have more wealthy set of opponents of wind power that is going to relieve the people who live in cities of some of the clean air burdens from siting decisions made a generation ago.”
That means some wind farms can change the game. They move power plants from the backyards of the poor, and into the views of the rich and powerful.
An author of the report says they accounted for the housing bubble burst, and they still found that being close to a wind turbine did not affect how quickly a home sells.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
A new study finds living near
a wind turbine does not have
a noticeable impact on the
value of your home. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Transcript
A new study finds living near
a wind turbine does not have
a noticeable impact on the
value of your home. Rebecca
Williams has more:
Researchers looked at the sale prices of almost 7500 homes around the country over eleven years. The homes were as close as 800 feet to a turbine or as far as 10 miles away.
Ryan Wiser is a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s an author of the report. He says being near a wind turbine did not have a widespread impact on property values.
“There may be still some sense that the aesthetics of a place has been impacted either positively or negatively and that may affect one’s impression of value, even if it doesn’t affect actual home sales prices.”
Wiser says they accounted for the housing bubble burst, and they still found that being close to a wind turbine did not affect how quickly a home sells.
The project would send power - like wind or solar - across three electricity networks.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Wind and solar power farms are sprouting
up, but they have reliability problems.
Wind doesn’t always blow, and sun doesn’t
always shine. To keep the lights on,
utilities want to grab power from any
solar and wind farm that is working.
Shawn Allee reports one transmission
project could help out:
Transcript
Wind and solar power farms are sprouting
up, but they have reliability problems.
Wind doesn’t always blow, and sun doesn’t
always shine. To keep the lights on,
utilities want to grab power from any
solar and wind farm that is working.
Shawn Allee reports one transmission
project could help out:
It’s not easy to send California’s solar power eastward. Same goes for sending Texan wind power westward.
A proposed transmission project called Tres Amigas hopes to change that.
It would let utilities send power across three electricity networks.
Michael Giberson researches utility economics at Texas Tech University. He says the Tres Amigas project could go in just the right spot.
“The area where it’s locating in Eastern New Mexico close to the Texas borderr, is an area where there’s great renewable energy potential and this is gonna make it much easier for the grid to accomodate that.”
The Tres Amigas power project would need federal approval. It would also require Texas to link its grid with its neighbors’.
That’s something the Lone Star state might not do.
Some scientists blame global warming for larger and more intense hurricanes.
(Photo courtesy of NASA)
When it comes to hurricanes,
apparently size does matter.
New research suggests the bigger
the storm, the more tornadoes it
spawns. Tanya Ott reports:
Transcript
When it comes to hurricanes,
apparently size does matter.
New research suggests the bigger
the storm, the more tornadoes it
spawns. Tanya Ott reports:
Last year, Hurricane Ike ripped through Texas and the Midwest. It was a
relatively weak Category 2 storm. But it spun off a lot of tornadoes and
caused 32 billion dollars in damage.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of
Technology say they have a new model for predicting how many tornadoes a
hurricane will cause. Dr. Judith Curry says storm size – not intensity –
is the key.
“A lot of time people just think, oh it’s Category 5 or
it’s a Category 2, and they immediately calculate the risk to damage in
their head and the 5 is bad ande 2 isn’t so bad.”
But, Curry says, sometimes a 5 can be small and tight, and a 2,
especially one like Ike, can be big and produce a lot of tornadoes.
The study is published in this month’s Geophysical Research Letters.
Some scientists blame global warming for larger and more intense hurricanes.
Matthew Grocoff says a whole house fan gives the same comfort as you would have with an air conditioning system.
(Photo courtesy of Greenovation TV)
Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:
Transcript
Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:
For some people, air-conditioning just feels a little unnatural. I mean, it’s a refrigerated room, right?
There are older ways of cooling a house that are cheaper and use a lot less electricity.
Matthew Grocoff is with Greenovation TV. His website suggests all kinds of ways to make homes more green.
We met at a house in a tree-lined neighborhood of century-old homes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(sounds of house and stairs)
He wanted to show me an idea that’s like throwing open the windows and pulling in a cool summer breeze.
It’s called a whole house fan.
Grocoff: “We’re at the home of Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman. Thore actually installed this fan himself. It cost about $250 – about $9500 less than the quote that they got to install an air conditioning system in their house. And, this summer, they have not had to turn on their window units at all.”
Now Thore is not a carpenter. He’s a university researcher who studies monkey vocalizations. But, he decided he’d try to install the big fan in his ceiling on his own.
Bergman: “It was fairly easy. It took a couple hours. The tricky thing was – we have an older house that had layers of plaster and wood in the ceiling. So, cutting through that to make the hole took a little more work that it might in some houses. But it wasn’t too bad.”
Beehner: “I have to admit, I didn’t really believe that maybe he could install it himself. And yet, he did a great job. And I am the biggest fan of the whole house fan.”
Grocoff: “So, you’ve got the Beehner-Bergman fan club here. And this is interesting, because the goal, for most homeowners, is to get the house to a comfortable 72 degree temperature. And, it’s kind of strange that when it’s 65 degrees outside, and it’s 80 degrees inside your house, that we’re turning on an air conditioning unit when the air outside is actually colder than the air conditioning unit.”
(sound of fan turning on)
Bergman: “One drawback is the noise. Which, we’ve gotten used to. We kind of like it for sleeping – it blocks some of the street noise. We’re standing right underneath it, and it’s kind of hard to talk.”
Beehner: “But, we also have a baby. So the whole house fan serves as white noise, which really helps us move around upstairs while he’s asleep.”
Grocoff: “Those people who are not looking for that white noise sound, like Jacinta and Thore are for their baby, they’re going to be able to get something that’s quieter, more efficient, more insulated, that’s going to be virtually silent, at the higher price points.”
There have been some surprises along the way.
Jacinta says, you have to keep in mind – anything in the night air will be drawn into the house.
Beehner: “One night, we actually did turn it on, and within about one minute, our entire house was filled with the smell of skunk.
Grocoff: “So, if you’ve got really good, deep skunk smell, you know the fan is working. Another possible drawback is, with the air, you’re bringing in any kind of dust, pollen, anything else like that.”
But, Grocoff says, overall, this big sorta-box fan in the ceiling really pulls the hot air out of the house and pulls the cool air from outdoors into the house.
Now, these fans don’t work everywhere.
If you live in an extremely humid area, or a region where it never really cools down at night or in the morning, it might not be a good fit.
But for areas that enjoy cooler mornings and evenings in the summer, Grocoff says this is a good alternative.
Grocoff: “With a whole house attic fan, you’re going to get the same comfort as you would with an air conditioning system. But, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the cost for running an air conditioning system is 20 cents to 30 cents every hour that you have that turned on. For a whole house attic fan, you’re talking about a penny to a nickel an hour.”
There are all kinds of designs besides the big box fan types.
You can go to a home improvement store, your heating and cooling installer, or do some research online at greenovation.TV or just type in whole house fan in Google. You’ll find plenty of places wanting to sell you there version of a newly popular old idea.
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.
The wind is up, and so is interest in wind power development. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Wind power is a small, but fast-growing segment
of the U.S. energy market. Right now, energy companies are scouring rural America for the best spots to put up wind turbines. But wind is not enough – these companies need land, too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one wind developer’s search for its next wind farm:
Transcript
Wind power is a small, but fast-growing segment of the U.S. energy market. Right now, energy companies are scouring rural America for the best spots to put up wind turbines, but wind is not enough – these companies need land, too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one wind developer’s search for its next wind farm.
The search for wind power could turn into a modern-day gold rush. Wind’s becoming a profitable way to meet growing demand for clean energy, but wind power companies face an obstacle: they can’t just find a windy spot and throw up some wind turbines.
They’ve got to sign a contract with a landowner, usually a farmer, who’s willing to rent out some breezy land. Mike Donahue is Vice President of Midwest Wind Power. His main job: find windy land and the farmers who own it. Donahue says the job’s changed recently.
“The biggest difference is the level of knowledge and sophistication that local elected officials and landowners have gotten regarding windpower. I mean, when we first started, they were like, ‘Wind what? Wind turbine? What’s that?’ They didn’t even know what a wind turbine looked like, let alone whether they wanted one in their field or not.”
For their part, savvy farmers aren’t waiting around for companies to call them. They’re taking the initiative. David Coffey farms hundreds of acres in Illinois. A few months back, he did a little investigating.
“First of all, I just had got the information from the Farm Bureau Magazine and what was going on in other areas. And I just got it in my mind, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got a ridge here, what’s it worth?'”
So Coffey got equipment from a university and tested the wind along his ridge. The initial results were promising, and the university posted the data online. Donahue’s company noticed the results, and gave David Coffey a call.
Which leads us to today. Coffey’s agreed to give the company a tour of the area. After some quick introductions, Donahue, his partner Tim Polz, and I, squeeze into Coffey’s white pickup.
(Sound of door shutting)
Coffey drives us along a maze of gravel-lined back roads and soy bean fields. Soon, we see the ridge that brought Donahue’s company here. It’s not that spectacular, really. It’s just a big, rolling hill, but it spreads to the horizon.
DONAHUE: “Just eyeballing this, it looks like this ridge runs how many miles, would you say, from east to west?”
COFFEY: “Well, I would say it’s going to be close to… I’d say eight to ten.”
DONAHUE: “And then it’s roughly a mile across it?”
COFFEY: “Yeah, or a little better, if you’re gonna stay right on top of it, I’d say.”
Midwest Wind Power wants a large site like this, because it’s hard to turn a profit on smaller ones. Several farmers own bits of this ridge, so Donahue might have to deal with all of them, and that could be a headache.
David Coffey says some locals are worried about helping out. Landowners who build support for the project might not have enough wind on their own farms to qualify for a turbine and a rental
contract. Donahue says there’s a way to smooth that over. If someone’s been helpful but is left out…
“We actually do offer a kind of good neighbor compensation package to them as well.”
Of course, maybe other companies noticed David Coffey’s wind data, too. Donahue’s assistant, Tim Polz, broaches the subject.
“Have you guys had any of the other developers give you any type of financial offers?”
Coffey says yes, but doesn’t elaborate. Donahue makes his pitch. He says his company offers more than good rent, it offers other benefits attractive to farmers.
“Along those lines, we grant a great deal of flexibility to the landowners to have input into turbine locations, access road locations, cabling routes.”
Even with this flexibility, though, money counts. The company will pay farmers about seven thousand dollars each year for every turbine on their property. That’s a lot for an Illinois farmer. On average, they make only thirty thousand dollars in farm income each year.
Soon the conversation shifts away from money. Donahue asks whether Coffey’s neighbors are mostly farmers.
“If you’re in an area that has a number of non-farming residential homes, maybe built in wood lots, or people who want to live in the country, they’re less accepting of having wind turbines developed in view of their homes.”
Coffey assures him nearly everyone’s a farmer out here. And with that, he ends the tour.
“Well, what do you think of the area?”
Donahue says the company needs to run more wind tests along the ridge, but overall…
“The first impressions are very favorable as to the site and its potential. We’re looking forward to meeting with your other landowners and then ultimately, meeting some elected officials as well.”
It’s not clear what will come of today’s meeting. Maybe another company will land a contract, or perhaps there’ll never be turbines here, but the chances for success improve with each encounter.
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)
