Windy Future for Alternative Energy

Alternative energy was a hot topic in the first half of 2008 with oil prices on the rise and our economic outlook darkening. However, the recent five month decline in oil prices put a damper on most of the outcry for an alternative energy future as drivers seemed to face less pressure at the pump and short memories forgot the hardships of expensive oil.

The global slowdown is responsible for the drop in commodity prices – particularly things like oil – and when the rest of the world recovers we will likely witness another rise in oil prices. What we need to do in the meantime is use this opportunity to build up replacement technologies that will phase out expensive oil and toxic coal as energy sources.

One of the most sought after of these alternatives is wind power. Wind farms are a major part of T. Boone Pickens’ “Pickens Plan” and could be a vital cog in our drive to break this country’s addiction to foreign oil. Wind Farms offer a chance to tap into an unlimited resource which is inexhaustible and readily available. Most forms of wind power generation produce zero carbon emission – or pollution of any kind for that matter – and the production and manufacturing of turbine components would jumpstart an industry right here in the United States.

However, there are several major drawbacks to wind power as well. Wind farms require constant maintenance due to the incredible amount of moving components and machinery involved in each turbine. This makes startup and overhead costs a major issue, but at the same time it offers long-term job stability to the skilled crews who would be employed to maintain and upkeep the farms.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is the unreliability of the wind. There is a wind corridor in the Great Plans where the winds tumble down the Rocky Mountains like an avalanche. This corridor could provide up to 20 percent of the nation’s energy needs if harnessed to the fullest, however most of the country does not have the natural geography necessary to sustain major wind facilities. A wind turbine may generate well on the Great Plains or off the coasts, but it will sit uselessly in low-wind regions.

Because of this drawback, wind power cannot be relied upon as the United States’ only oil and coal alternative. Most politicians and citizens are looking for a quick fix and a cure-all which simply doesn’t exist, so they pull back from their support of a technology which fails to promise the results they want.

Instead of looking for a cure-all, we need a broad based initiative that makes use of any and every viable technology. We could incorporate nuclear technologies with up and coming “green” movements like wind, solar, geothermal and others and completely rewrite the U.S. electric grid. Wind power is not the only solution, but it is certainly a good solution. We have only a few courses of action to take: we could do nothing and hope that our finite oil and coal resources last forever, we could hope for a science-fiction breakthrough in cold fusion or stellar energy fantasies, or we could start building an array of facilities to power the world of tomorrow today. No nation, no civilization, can sit around hoping for a savior to come and rescue them, they have to take it upon themselves. Harnessing the wind would be a great place to start.

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