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Wind energy produces electricity without emitting any pollutants or greenhouse gases at all, requires no mining or drilling, helps preserve habitat and open space, and poses no national security threats. Wind energy could easily and cost-effectively contribute 20% of California's electricity supply by 2020.
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When you turn your house lights on, chances are that the electricity was generated by a power plant that burns fossil fuels - coal, oil, or natural gas. These sources of energy account for more than 70% of current U.S. electricity generation and 58% of California's electricity generation.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, fossil-fuel-fired power plants are the leading U.S. source of carbon dioxide emissions - a primary contributor to global warming, our most serious environmental problem and one that threatens every species on Earth.
The burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation is the single greatest source of air pollution in the U.S., causing cancer and other chronic health problems. The extraction of fossil fuels also degrades our land and water resources -- consider the coal industry's practice of "mountain top removal."
And yet fossil fuels are projected to account for the vast majority of power plant capacity additions over the next 20 years at a time when dramatic reductions in fossil fuel use are urgently needed to protect the planet.
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Wind is the most widespread, commercially available renewable source of power in the U.S. In California, as of December 2006, 2,300 megawatts (MW) of existing wind energy capacity already generates enough energy to serve the electricity needs of 747,000 households. Each year, as compared (conservatively) to pollutants from a relatively low-emission new natural gas plant, this clean electricity prevents the production of:
- 1,125 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) - a primary greenhouse gas
- 225 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) - which creates smog
- 155 tons of particulate matter (PM10) - which causes respiratory health problems
California's current wind energy generation also reduces the demand for natural gas by 96 million cubic feet per day, which in turn reduces the marginal price of natural gas for all gas consumers. This gas-price-reducing effect saves consumers an estimated $25 million annually. (All figures calculated by Crossborder Energy for CalWEA.)
Wind Energy can have side benefits as well. In some cases, wind projects help preserve habitat or open space, by making land profitable without dense housing and commercial developments. This is because the "footprint" of wind projects amounts to only about 5% of the total project area, preserving that space for agricultural or ranching use, or for no "use" at all.
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In addition to providing clean energy, wind also makes our electricity system more reliable. While not intended as a "capacity" resource to meet system peak load, California's existing wind projects do provide "capacity value" to the system in an amount equivalent to about 25% of their nameplate electrical rating. Values for new projects will be higher. Wind's variable output (very similar to changing consumer demand for power) can be readily managed by grid operators (See Energy Commission report and a CalWEA editorial on these topics).
According to the Utility Wind Interest Group, there are no fundamental technical barriers to wind penetrations of up to 20% of system peak demand, which is far beyond where we are today.
Nationally, sustained growth could allow wind to provide 20% of total U.S. electrical generation within the next couple of decades, approximately 340,000 MW.
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In the fall of 2006 Governor Schwarzenegger signed a landmark greenhouse gas (GHG) law which sets ambitious targets committing California to reduce its GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state's electricity sector presents perhaps the greatest challenge to reaching this goal. CalWEA believes that wind energy can help meet that challenge by contributing up to 20% of California's energy output by 2020.
Achieving 20% wind energy in California by 2020 would require reaching 20,000 MW of wind capacity serving the state - a nearly 10-fold increase in today's capacity. This is achievable. A total of 17,000 MW of proposed projects inside or near the border of California have already submitted applications for grid interconnection at the California ISO (as of June 2007). Along with the 2,400 MW already operating, these wind energy projects in the pipeline are nearly enough to meet the 20% goal.
In addition to a number of new projects around the state, about 4,500 MW of new capacity is expected to come on line by 2010 in the Tehachapi region southeast of Bakersfield, as part of meeting the state's existing renewable energy requirement. The Tehachapi wind resource area alone will then produce as much energy as is generated by California's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant - and at prices lower than the state's electric utilities would pay for power from new natural gas-fired power plants.
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Most human activities have some negative impact on the environment, and wind projects are no exception. If wind energy is to help combat global warming, wind projects will have visual impacts and will affect birds, bats, and other wildlife. As Bill McKibben effectively argues, however, global warming is a greater imperative.
Fortunately, for the vast majority of the hundreds of wind projects across the country, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that "In the context of other sources of avian [mortality], it does not appear that wind power is responsible for a significant number of bird deaths." The one wind project area that has proven to be uniquely hazardous for birds is the Altamont Pass, near Livermore, California.
The Altamont- one of the first wind resource areas to be developed in the U.S., in the mid-1980's - is acknowledged to have a relatively high number of avian fatalities compared with all other wind project sites in the country. This is due in part to the abundant raptor prey (rodents) in the area. The level of avian mortality in the Altamont may not be as high as has been widely reported, however. Independent reviews commissioned by both CalWEA and the California Energy Commission show that the conclusions of a widely-cited 2004 report, which contained mortality estimates significantly higher than found in past studies, are not credible. See summary of these reviews.
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Although wind power is one of the most environmentally friendly energy sources available today, CalWEA and the wind industry are committed to reducing avian impacts. In the Altamont, the industry is working with Alameda County to develop measures that will reduce avian fatalities in the area. Measures already in place are estimated to cost the industry approximately $9 million annually in lost revenues and direct costs.
CalWEA is working at the CPUC to facilitate what appears to be the most promising way to reduce avian impacts: repowering - i.e., replacing the many older turbines with far fewer, larger modern ones.(See CalWEA's CPUC filings)
Our efforts are partially responsible for nearly 100 MW of projects that have been repowered in the state since 2005, including 56 MW in the Altamont, where some 550 MW are operating.
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As a green industry, the wind industry takes the issue of avian mortality seriously and is committed to reducing harm to wildlife caused by wind projects. The following are some of the measures the industry has taken which result in avoiding and reducing avian impacts as compared to early experience in the Altamont Pass:
- Repowering, or replacing old wind turbines with new ones, is essential. Modern turbines are much larger, so fewer than one-tenth as many turbines are needed to generate the same amount of energy
- Blades on modern turbines rotate more slowly, are more visible, and are situated much higher, so they are not only easier for birds to avoid, but are high enough to avoid sensitive flight zones for many raptors
- Perching opportunities on turbines and their towers have been minimized
- Power lines are buried when feasible and otherwise constructed to minimize the risk to raptors
- Guy wires are not used on new turbine towers
- Project developers routinely avoid sites with high environmental sensitivity. At other sites, developers work with county and other local officials to carefully evaluate potential environmental impacts well before the start of construction.
- Where there is possible risk of significant avian mortality at a site, pre-construction avian monitoring is conducted to better understand impacts and to develop a mitigation plan. (For more information on siting projects in California, see CalWEA's comments before the California Energy Commission on this topic.)
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It is important to keep wind's impacts on wildlife in perspective. In addition to the global warming and air quality impacts associated with fossil fuels that profoundly affect wildlife habitats, many other human activities are far more hazardous for birds than wind turbines.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates, for example, that communications towers conservatively kill 4 to 5 million birds annually in this country, and possibly as many as 50 million. Up to two million birds are killed annually in oil and wastewater pits, mainly in the western states. And domestic and feral cats may kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other birds annually.
By comparison, the agency estimates that existing wind turbines kill an estimated 33,000 birds annually. Even if this number were to increase linearly with the number of new turbines -- which is unlikely due to the industry's improved technology and siting techniques, wind-related avian fatalities would still account for a very small fraction of birds killed by other human causes.
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Wind energy projects consume virtually no water, using just one one-thousandth of a gallon per kWh (mostly for blade cleaning). In contrast, California's conventional power plants use 300 gallons for each kWh, an amount equivalent to 1% of the state's urban water use. According to the California Energy Commission, 17 billion gallons of water per day are used to cool California coastal power plants, harming small and large marine animals through the physical impact of pulling massive amounts of water through the intake systems and by raising water temperature.
Water scarcity and water politics have shaped California's history and produced some of its largest public works projects, which have dramatically affected, and continue to affect, the state's ecosystems. Using wind turbines for power generation reduces the demand for scarce water resources.
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The American Wind Energy Association has created an excellent guide to the physics and technology of wind energy. This article and others can be found at these links:
http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_basics.html
http://www.nrel.gov/learning/re_wind.html
http://www.energy.ca.gov/wind/index.html
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+ As a result of strong public policy, California was the first U.S. state in which large wind energy projects were developed, beginning in the early 1980's.
+ Wind turbines in California provide enough energy to power over 747,000 California households.
+ In 2004, California wind projects generated 4,258 gigawatt-hours of electricity -- about 1.5 percent of the state's gross system power. That's enough electricity to serve a city the size of San Francisco.
+ CalWEA expects wind energy to serve 5 percent of California's electricity needs by 2012 or sooner.
+ With strong public policy, wind energy could realistically provide 20% of California's electricity supply by 2020.
View all news releases and updates >>>
An Editorial: CalWEA Executive Director Answers the Question: Is the RPS Working? Read more >>>
Nature Writer Bill McKibben -- “[W]hat we need to say is: every bird, and everything else that we know, is fundamentally at risk in the next few decades. In the name of birds, I want that windmill on my ridge. In the name of wild beauty, I want that windmill out my window……” Read more >>>
The Birds and The Breeze - from Sierra Magazine, “According to a 2003 study of 4,700 turbines located outside California, each killed 2.3 birds per year. That's a tiny number compared with the hundreds of millions of birds that fall prey to cats every year……and it pales in comparison to the number of birds and other creatures that would be killed by catastrophic global warming.” Read more >>>
CalWEA addresses wind energy’s reliability in this Energy Circuit Editorial – “The initial results from a California Energy Commission study show that the California grid has the technical capability to include 20 percent intermittent generation under a 33 percent renewable goal without the need for significant new resources to accommodate the variability of these intermittent renewables.” Read more >>>
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