by David Fessler, Advisory Panelist
In the waning days of the Great Depression, FDR Signed the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 into law, heralding a new era of growth and prosperity for the nation’s heartland.
While electricity was generally available in cities and towns, it was nearly unheard of on farms, ranches and other rural areas. The REA brought electric power to these sparsely populated Midwest farms and ranches.
Today the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.
President Obama is hoping that Midwest rural areas will return the favor, and provide much needed wind-generated power to densely populated cities and towns up and down both coasts of the country…
Wind turbines are huge, and not well suited to more densely populated areas. They are a natural fit in the vast open plains of the nation’s heartland, where the wind almost never stops blowing. But there’s a problem… it’s just not the one you might think.
Here’s why wind-generated power is still going to be the driving force for change in the way we use energy, and one of the biggest obstacles it has right now to getting us to where we need to be.
A Banner Year For The Wind Power Industry
2008 was a banner year for the wind power industry:
- Previous installation records were blown away, with over 8,500 megawatts (MW) of new generating power installed in the United States alone. That’s enough to light over 2 million homes.
- Wind power installations represented 42% of all the new power generation capacity added in 2008.
- The 44 million tons of carbon emissions avoided equates to taking 7 million cars and trucks off the highways.
As a result of the current recession, the wind energy installation outlook for 2009 will be somewhat muted compared to last year, with about 5,000 MW expected to be installed. But despite the downturn, the industry is still in expansion mode.
And that’s a good thing.
A lot of the stuff is engineered and made right here: domestic “made in the USA” components now make up about 50% of the average system, up from 30% in 2005. And like any other burgeoning sector, when business is booming, companies expand and hire people.
In just the last two years, wind turbine, tower and component manufacturers announced new facilities, added or expanded 70 facilities, 55 of them in 2008 alone.
It’s creates lots of jobs as well. Today 85,000 people are employed in the wind industry. That’s a 70% increase from just one year ago. It’s all good news… well almost all of it.
