May 12, 2004

Wind Harvest Company Wind News
A compilation of story leads from around the world.
By:  Kevin Wolf

Note:  These story titles and lead paragraphs predominantly come from Energy Central's daily posting of the world's energy stories. Others are sent to me by subscribers of Wind News.  Energy Central requires paid membership to read full stories.  You can often paste the headline into the Google search engine and find the original source of the story.   When I have them, I will include the URL.  Please send me stories that you find, and I will add them into the next edition of Wind News.  Thank you. Kevin
<><><><><><><><>

TUCKER COUNTY, W.VA., WIND TURBINE BLADES KILL 2,000 BATS YEARLY

  The whirling blades of the 44 wind turbines atop Backbone Mountain
  in Tucker County killed more than 2,000 bats and nearly 200 birds
  last year, according to estimates from researchers hired to study
  bird and bat deaths at the site.
***************

DESPITE DRILLING, U.S. GAS OUTPUT CONTINUED DECLINE IN Q1

  Three analyst groups have concluded that quarterly U.S. natural
  gas production dropped between 4.9-5.3% compared with a year ago,
  led by a sharp decline among the majors. - (NGIís Daily Gas Price Index)
***************

U.S. utility wants 500 MW of new renewables

DENVER, Colorado, US, 2004-05-12 (Refocus Weekly) The fourth-largest utility
in the United States wants to acquire 500 MW of predominantly wind power.

Xcel Energy has filed its least-cost resource plan with the Colorado Public
Utilities Commission, to develop 3,600 MW of generating capacity by 2013.
The PUC requires a plan every four years to plan for growing energy demand
in the state.

The utility analyzed 100 resource mix options, using a “reasonable range of
potential fuel costs and environmental regulations, to recommend that it
obtain up to 500 MW from renewables, mainly wind, “acquired ahead of other
needed resources. It also wants to use an all-source bid process to secure
new capacity from natural gas or other fossil fuel-fired generation,
additional green power resources, and demand reduction programs.

It asked for PUC permission to request proposals for the green power this
July, to take advantage of the expected renewal of the federal production
tax credit for wind energy and to have the renewable energy power available
by late 2006. It also intends to request proposals for additional wind or
solar resources to further hedge against volatile fossil-fuel prices.
***************

Europe Leading World Into Age of Wind Energy

by Lester R. Brown

RE Insider, May 10, 2004 - Europe is leading the world into the age of wind
energy. In its late 2003 projections, the European Wind Energy Association
(EWEA) shows Europe's wind-generating capacity expanding from 28,400
megawatts in 2003 to 75,000 megawatts in 2010 and 180,000 megawatts in 2020.
By 2020, just 16 years from now, wind-generated electricity is projected to
satisfy the residential needs of 195 million Europeans, half of the region's
population.

Wind-generating capacity worldwide, growing at over 30 percent per year, has
jumped from less than 5,000 megawatts in 1995 to 39,000 megawatts in 2003,
an increase of nearly eight fold. Among fossil fuels, natural gas leads with
an annual growth rate of just over 2 percent during the same period,
followed by oil at less than 2 percent, and coal at less than 1 percent.
Nuclear generating capacity expanded by 2 percent.

The modern wind-generating industry was born in California during the early
1980s, but the United States, which now has 6,300 megawatts of generating
capacity, has fallen behind Europe in adopting this promising new
technology. Germany overtook the United States in 1997; within Europe, it
leads the way with 14,600 megawatts of generating capacity. Spain, a rising
wind power in southern Europe, may overtake the United States in 2004. Tiny
Denmark, which led Europe into the wind era with the development of its own
wind resources, now gets an impressive 20 percent of its electricity from
wind. It is also the world's leading manufacturer and exporter of wind
turbines.

After developing most of its existing 28,400 megawatts of capacity on land,
Europe is now tapping offshore wind resources as well. A 2004 assessment of
Europe's offshore potential by the Garrad Hassan wind energy consulting
group concluded that if Europe moves more aggressively to develop its vast
offshore resources, wind could be supplying all of the region's residential
electricity by 2020.

The United Kingdom is moving fast to develop its offshore wind capacity. In
April 2001, it accepted bids for sites designed to produce 1,500 megawatts
of wind-generating capacity. In December 2003, the government took bids for
15 additional offshore sites with a generating capacity that could exceed
7,000 megawatts. Requiring an investment of over $12 billion, these wind
farms off the east and northwest coasts of England, the north coast of
Wales, and in the shallow waters of the Thames estuary could satisfy the
residential electricity needs of 10 million of the country's 60 million
people.

The push to develop wind in Europe is spurred in part by concerns about
global warming. The record heat wave in Europe in August 2003 that scorched
crops and claimed 35,000 lives has accelerated the replacement of
climate-disrupting coal with clean energy sources.

Wind is appealing for several reasons. It is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible,
widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign, a set of attributes that no
other energy source can match. When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
released its first wind resource inventory in 1991, it pointed out that
three wind-rich states -- North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas -- had enough
available wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Those who had
thought of wind as a marginal source of energy obviously were surprised by
this finding.

In retrospect, we now know that this was a gross underestimation of the
potential of this renewable energy source, because it was based on the
technologies of 1991. Advances in wind turbine design since then enable
turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to convert wind into electricity
more efficiently, and to harness a much larger wind regime. In 1991, wind
turbines may have averaged scarcely 40 meters in height. In 2004, new
turbines are 100 meters tall with much longer blades that are designed to
more efficiently capture the energy in wind, perhaps tripling the amount of
harvestable wind. While the DOE could say in 1991 that North Dakota, Kansas,
and Texas had enough available wind energy to supply national electricity
needs, we may now be able to say that they have enough available wind energy
to supply national energy needs.

When the wind industry first began to develop in California in the early
1980s, wind-generated electricity cost 38 cents per kilowatt-hour. Since
then it has dropped to 4 cents or below in prime wind sites. And some
long-term supply contracts have been signed for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
EWEA projects that by 2020 many wind farms will be generating electricity at
2 cents per kilowatt-hour, making it cheaper than all other sources of
electricity.

Once we get cheap electricity from wind, we have the option of electrolyzing
water to produce hydrogen, which provides a way of both storing and
efficiently transporting wind energy. At night when the demand for
electricity drops, the hydrogen generators can be turned on to build up
reserves. Hydrogen is the fuel of choice for the fuel cell engines that
automakers worldwide are working on and, if push comes to shove on the
climate front, cars with gasoline-burning internal combustion engines can be
converted to hydrogen.

Once in storage, hydrogen can be used to fuel power plants, much as natural
gas is used. This hydrogen can be either a backup for wind power or an
alternative to natural gas, especially if rising prices make gas
prohibitively costly for electricity generation.

The principal cost for wind-generated electricity is the capital outlay for
initial construction. Since wind is a free fuel, the only ongoing cost is
for maintenance. Given the recent volatility of natural gas prices, the
stability of wind power prices is particularly appealing. With the
possibility of even higher costs of natural gas in the future, natural
gas-fired plants may be used increasingly as a backup for wind-generated
electricity.

The United States is lagging in developing wind energy not because it cannot
compete technologically with Europe in manufacturing wind turbines but
because of a lack of leadership in Washington. The wind production tax
credit of 1.5 cent per kilowatt-hour, which was adopted in 1992 to establish
parity with subsidies to fossil fuel, has been permitted to lapse three
times in the last five years, most recently at the end of 2003 when Congress
failed to pass a new energy bill. The uncertainty about when it will be
renewed has disrupted planning throughout the wind power industry.

Europe's leadership has given it a major economic bonus: nine of the world's
10 leading wind turbine manufacturers are in three countries -- Denmark,
Germany, and Spain. These happen to be the three countries that have had the
strongest and most stable market incentives.

The United States -- with its advanced technology and wealth of wind
resources -- should be a leader in this field, but unfortunately it
continues to rely heavily on coal, a nineteenth century energy source, for
much of its electricity at a time when European countries are replacing coal
with wind. Europe is not only leading the world into the wind age, it is
also leading the world into the post-fossil fuel age -- the age of renewable
energy and climate stabilization. By demonstrating the potential for
harnessing the energy in wind, Europe is unveiling the new energy economy
for the rest of the world.

About the author...

Lester R. Brown, is the founder and President of the Earth Policy Institute.
He is the author of numerous books, including Eco-Economy: Building an
Economy for the Earth where he develops a vision for an environmentally
sustainable economy, chapters, articles, etc., he helped pioneer the concept
of environmentally sustainable development. His principal research areas
include food, population, water, climate change, and renewable energy. In
1974, he founded Worldwatch Institute, of which he was President for its
first 26 years. As President, he launched the World Watch Papers, the
Worldwatch/Norton books, the annual State of the World report, the bimonthly
magazine World Watch, the annual Vital Signs, and the Institute's News
Briefs.

Copyright © 2003 - SolarAccess.com - All Rights Reserved