Twenty years from now, the US could get 20% of its electricity from wind energy, according to a US government report. The report is the result of collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry. The best part is that most of the technology needed is already available. Wind energy currently accounts for only about 1% of US electricity generation.
'The United States posseses abundant wind resources,' said the report by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It concludes that a 20% share of electricity production 'while ambitious, could be feasible.'
While most of the technology necessary is available, it still requires improvements to existing turbine technology. The need is there for larger, more efficient wind turbines for land based and offshore installations, as well as more efficient and quieter wind turbines for distributed applications. The entire electricity grid system will have to be re-designed to carry power from high wind areas to other parts of the country.For wind energy to play a role in supplying the nation's energy needs, integrating wind energy into the power grid of the US is an important issue to address. Large amounts of wind energy are located in areas of the US without transmission lines to the power grid, and the natural variability of the wind resources raises concerns about how wind can be integrated into the existing system.
Wind energy posseses significant advantages over conventional fossil-fuel energy sources. Wind is a clean, inexhaustible, indigenous energy resource. Apart from being a renewable resource it is absolutely free, and once the initial investment has been made, it requires very little maintenance as well.The cost of initial investment will also come down significantly once turbines are manufactured on a large scale. Therefore apart from being an energy resource, development of wind energy also has the potential to create local jobs and economic development. Another big advantage lies in reducing carbon di-oxide emissions which cause global warming. If the US indeed does go ahead with this ambitious scheme, the reduction in the levels of this greenhouse gas would be the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road.
Last year the cumulative US wind energy capacity reached 16,818 megawatts, with more than 5,000 megawatts of capacity installed in 2007 alone. Wind power contributed more than 30% of the new US generation capacity in 2007, making it the second largest source of new power generation in the nation, behind natural gas. The US wind energy industry invested approximately $9 billion in new generating capacity in 2007 and has experienced a 30% annual growth rate over the last 5 years.
The US does not currently have a federal requirement for a certain percentage of electricity generation to come from renewable energy. There are however incentives to encourage adoption of renewable technologies through tax incentives and production tax credits. Additionally there are 30 states and the District of Columbia that do have renewable energy requirements and targets of various types, many mandating 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020.