admin answers:

Hi there, I work for one of the world’s leading renewable energy consultancies. While my background is more technical in nature (I’m an engineer), I’ll take a shot at answering your question.

Wind energy certainly is viable in many parts of the world without subsidy. We came dangerously close to finding out exactly how viable it would be this year in the U.S., when an extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) was extended into 2009 at the last minute as one of the “sweeteners” that got the $700 billion Wall St bailout passed.
Http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/nicholas/insider/thegreengrok/the-700-billion-bailout-bill-goes-green-not-quite

The current subsidy for wind energy in the U.S. Is PTC, which is a tax credit currently equal to 2 cents per kWh. The price for electricity varies significantly by region, so some regions are more closely tied to the PTC than others to make the economics of a wind project work out. For example, the price for electricity is only about 4.5 cents per kWh in the Midwest (e.g. Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota), so that extra 2 cent per kWh makes a huge difference. In other parts of the country (California, Hawaii, New England), the price of electricity is over 10 cents per kWh, so the 2 cent tax credit is relatively less valuable there.

The bottom line is that there are several places under development now in the U.S. That are good enough to justify being built without the 2 cents per kWh tax credit – these select locations are very windy, close to a transmission line, and/or in areas with high electricity prices. Without the subsidy, the growth of wind energy in the United States (same goes for the rest of the world, to my knowledge) would be severely affected. Thousands of people would be laid off, a significant portion of projects would be canceled, and we’d all go back to burning lots of cheap and dirty coal, nuclear, hydro, and finally natural gas to fill off the balance of our energy needs.

Regarding your question about oil imports in countries like India, I think you might be slightly misguided. Wind energy does not provide fuel for transportation, just electricity. Until we have a way to develop the hydrogen economy (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hydrogen-economy.htm, convert electricity to hydrogen fuel, distribute it through a nationwide infrastructure we don’t have, and put it in cars that are currently cost-prohibitive), we will remain addicted to oil. The alternative to oil (for now) is ethanol. Especially in places like Brazil, which have plenty of land and a great climate for growing sugar cane ethanol rather than the subsidized corn ethanol we produce here in the U.S.

Wind energy is the cheapest form of renewable energy currently available, and it will get cheaper in the coming years as the credit crisis corrects what has been a massive seller’s market for wind turbines in the last few years. Competition in wind turbine manufacturing is up, and the cost of steel (the 80 m towers) and cement (the massive foundations) is down. These factors will lead to wind energy becoming cheaper in the next few years. Wind energy can be cost-competitive with natural gas, offsetting our need for this finite resource and (hopefully) lowering prices for consumers. That’s the long-term benefit of the subsidy – get the industry built up now so we will be well set for a future of increasingly scarce oil and natural gas, which will be imported from unstable regions of the world.

admin answers:

Hey Sunshine, here’s a better way to word your question: How much real estate would it take to install the wind turbines necessary to power the United States? There is no real answer to how many turbines because they vary in size and output depending on the wind variations where they are installed. A turbine in Oklahoma might have different blade configurations than one in North Dakota because in one state, the winds blow really hard in the fall and winter, in the other, they blow fairly steady all year. But here is something you can bite into: “There is enough wind in North and South Dakota to power the entire country.” That was made about 15 years ago after the American Wind Energy Association did some research on the subject. It would be stupid to install all the wind turbines there, because we would waste lots of it running it through millions of miles of transmission lines, but you get the idea.

The real beauty of wind power is that it is spread fairly evenly over the middle third of our globe, which is where most of the people live. So we can put turbines near population centers and reduce how much we ship around, taking the load off our grid, and reducing air pollution from coal fired plants and other traditional sources. There are some great places to look into this subject, I will list some below. Take care, Rudydoo