by Mike Powell

Recently, Texas took the lead in wind energy production surpassing California. Now wind energy advocates are looking to establish offshore wind farms on the Gulf Coast.
While the present and near future look rosy for the wind energy industry, critics claim that wind farms create more problems than solutions when it comes to our environment.

For the last 20 years Europe has led the way in wind energy and technology. However, in this new millennium the United States has experienced what could best be described as a wind energy boom.

In testimony to Congress last spring Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), said of America’s rapidly growing wind energy industry:

“After many years of limited growth through the 1990s, the wind industry has begun to come of age in this country and U.S. wind electric generation has more than quadrupled in the last six years. In fact, in the last two years, more new wind generating capacity (4,885 megawatts) was installed than in the industry’s first 20 years (1981-2000).”

According to Swisher, one megawatt (MW) of wind power can produce enough electricity to power 250 to 300 homes on an average day. Multiply that by about 5,000 and you have enough energy to power millions of homes.

Texas currently leads the way in wind energy production. The AWEA reported last spring that Texas houses three of the five largest wind energy facilities in the nation. The onslaught of drought coupled with declining oil production has led many West Texas towns and counties to adapt wind energy as an economic commodity. Over the last decade, land-based wind energy production in Texas has increased by 20 percent per year on average. Over this same decade, Texas has experienced over 2.5 percent electrical usage per year on average. According to an assessment by the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association (TREIA), Texas has over 2,455 wind turbines producing 3,089 MW maximum output.

Rising energy costs, government subsidies and political pressure have led energy companies to invest millions of dollars into once economically stagnant West Texas towns and counties. Why invest in West Texas? Two reasons vital to creating wind energy: First, the vast prairies and mesas of West Texas make it an ideal location for wind farms. Second, there can’t be wind energy without wind and the mostly flat land of West Texas allows wind to flow with little getting in its way.

“Wind power is bringing relief to parched economies in West Texas and creating manufacturing jobs throughout the state. Local leaders recognize the opportunities and want to see more wind power,” Peter Altman, executive director of  Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED), said.

In 1999 Austin lawmakers adopted the Renewable Portfolio Standard, which calls on Texas to increase renewable energy output to equal 10 percent of the state’s total energy output by 2025. Of these renewable resources (also including solar, geothermal and hydroelectric) wind energy has emerged as the resource leader in terms of production and profit.

Even in a state as large as Texas the amount of land area useful for wind farms is limited. Each wind turbine requires several acres of cleared land in order to function properly. This fact has led wind energy advocates to look towards the Texas Gulf Coast to further the wind farm industry offshore. Recently, the state of Texas and a private Louisiana energy company received a federal permit to begin research and production of the first offshore wind energy facility in the United States.

“Texas has a deep industrial know-how based in our history of oil and gas development. Texas has the deep-water ports, strong gulf winds and political will to make our coast the perfect site for new blade-testing facility,” Commissioner Jerry Patterson, of the Texas General Land Office, said.

Patterson compares the new test facility’s economic and technological potential to that of NASA’s space center in Houston in the 1960s.

If the research and planning is a success the offshore wind facility will be capable of supplying Galveston with up to 300 MW of power by 2009.

While these new developments in offshore wind energy are promising--when compared to Europe’s offshore production--the United States has only scratched the surface.

“Owing to land constraints, Europe has been the leader in regard to offshore wind development,” Patterson stated in his congressional testimony, “We expect offshore wind development to play a role in the U.S., but because it is more expensive compared to land-based development, offshore wind, outside of a few pioneering projects, won’t see significant development here until 2010.”

The Department of Energy estimates that the eastern coast of the United States has the potential to produce about 900,000 MW of wind energy.

The wind industry has enjoyed a recent upsurge of production, profit and political support. However, opponents to the economic and environmental viability of wind energy have emerged as well.

Eric Rosenbloom, president of National Wind Watch Inc., is a staunch critic of the wind industry. Rosenbloom’s company is dedicated to the curtailment of wind energy production. National Wind Watch Inc. and many other wind energy critics argue that wind energy production is an unreliable and environmentally destructive practice that has been only perpetuated by poorly conducted and dishonest research.

“Faced with the evidence of adverse impacts, many advocates of wind energy simply deny them,” said Rosenbloom, “Since there is little (if any) evidence of good from wind energy, it is our duty to oppose the fruitless and extensive industrialization of rural and wild places by the wind industry.”

Rosenbloom’s is one of many anti-wind energy groups that have emerged in opposition to the fast-growing wind industry. Armed with scientific data and testimony from residents who live near wind farms, these opposition groups have formed valid arguments against the wind industry. They claim that the environmental costs of clearing land for turbines, threatening bird and bat species with the large and often fast-moving turbine blades and the noise output of the turbines far outweigh the benefits when it comes to wind energy.

According to a 2003 study by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council, approximately 37,000 of the 1 billion avian and bat species killed by human structures were caused by wind turbines. While this number appears small, many of these avian deaths tended to be higher in certain areas with bat populations bearing the brunt. These numbers are estimated to rise as more wind farms are created. More extensive research will be needed to minimize bird and bat deaths as wind industry expands.

Two distinct disadvantages that both opponents and proponents can agree on is the unreliability of wind energy. More specifically, wind turbines rely strictly on wind to produce energy. Furthermore, the technology required to store wind energy does not exist.

With these two disadvantages in mind, opponents question the idea that wind turbines—while not directly creating greenhouse gas emissions—may indirectly create these emissions.

“An intermittent, variable, unpredictable source such as wind has to itself be balanced to maintain a steady voltage on the line,” said Rosenbloom, “This adds inefficiencies to the use of fuel by other sources or may require other sources to ‘stand by’—burning fuel to keep the steam ready to generate electricity when the wind drops.”

Besides the unreliability of wind energy, environmental hazards to avian and bat populations and harmful noise that may affect humans and other animals within the vicinity of a wind farm are other factors to be taken into account.

The move to offshore wind farming limits some of the environmentally destructive drawbacks of land-based operations; Rosenbloom contends that this move is not without its own set of drawbacks as well.

“While siting them [wind turbines] far offshore mitigates the impact on human neighbors, impacts on seascape and wildlife remain (besides interfering with birds, the turbines’ low-frequency noise is likely to disturb fish and sea mammals),” Rosenbloom said.

Europe, a continent with far less available land than the United States, has developed  offshore wind technology to great benefit, but this technology and practice is only now reaching the shores of the United States. Rosenbloom believes that this slow development of U.S. offshore wind farms is neither economical nor practical.

“Offshore construction is more difficult and expensive, and wear and tear on the turbines is much greater—promising to make offshore wind even more of a boondoggle than onshore,” Rosenbloom said.

While the wind energy debate continues to rage on, the need for alternative and renewable energy technology remains an issue everyone seems to agree with. Despite its critics, wind energy appears to be here to stay. One thing to remember is that no one renewable energy resource can feed the world’s energy needs. In order to break away from fossil fuel dependency investments must be made in multiple forms of renewable energy technologies such as solar, biomass and geothermal.

July 2007