WastedEnergy

In yesterday’s post, I discussed the meteoric rise (what is up with that phrase, anyway?) of wind power in the U.S. and worldwide over the past decade or so, as indicated by figures in the American Wind Energy Association’s (AWEA) annual report released earlier this week.  Today I will get deeper into some of the facts and figures used to support the claims I made that wind is a substantial and growing energy source that can contribute significantly to U.S. electric power generation and act as a wedge against energy scarcity, climate change, and other impacts of fossil fuel dependence.  If you are interested in our energy future (or, by logical extension, the future in general) I recommend following developments in this area, as wind is among the very few renewable energy sources that is scalable, cost-effective, and ready for prime time today.  AWEA’s full report is available for download at http://www.awea.org/reports/Annual_Market_Report_Press.pdf.

The first chart I will examine is a repost from yesterday’s article.  During 2009, roughly 10 gigawatts of nameplate wind generating capacity were added in the United States, bringing total cumulative capacity from 25 to just over 35 gigawatts:

This graph clearly illustrates the current exponential growth trend, and doubling of both new capacity additions and total capacity roughly every 2 years.  I would expect this growth will continue but start to slow down a bit once we start to reach the 10-20% range, as the current rate of expansion cannot be sustained indefinitely (it has to slow down before it reaches 100%, at the very least).  What we are looking at here is actually the beginning of a Hubbert (bell) curve, but well in advance of the plateau and production decline phases we have reached with petroleum and natural gas.  Currently, technological advances and growth in the wind energy industry are creating a great deal of uncertainty, which makes it extremely difficult to determine timeframes or quantity of energy produced for a ”peak wind” scenario.

While it is too soon to say whether and to what extent the current rapid deployment of wind energy systems will last, trends over the past decade or so reveal that investment and production have shifted to wind from other energy sources, and a growing share of all new electric generating capacity is in wind power:

The large scale of new natural gas capacity additions does not necessarily mean much, since most of these new gas-fired engines and turbines are only used for peak loads.  The tall bar for wind does not necessarily mean as much as it might seem either, since it gives no indication of the typical capacity factor, or the fraction of installed capacity actually generating energy at rated power at a given moment on average, for wind energy production. This graph is by no means a precise measure of how energy sources are changing, but it does give an idea of where investment dollars in the energy sector are going these days and illustrates that wind, unlike most other renewables, is becoming a very serious contender in its own right.  If wind’s share of new capacity remains close to its present level, by 2015 it is likely to become the first energy source to exceed 10% of total U.S. electricity production since the expansion of nuclear power in the 1970′s and 80′s.

While the first two graphs here should be cause for optimism for advocates of renewable energy, we must maintain a realistic outlook and understand that today’s rapid growth of wind energy production is still building from a very small base.  Remember some 15 years ago when forecasters dismissed China’s rapid economic growth because “8% annual growth from zero still leaves you with zero?”  Renewable energy production today is a similar ballgame; for wind and other renewable sources to become meaningful players in the energy economy, it is necessary to maintain today’s growth rates not just for a few months or years, but for a matter of decades:

Solar power takes home the prize for worst place.

While the wind industry deserves praise for its success in building the foundation of a sustainable energy economy, we still have a long way to go.  For all the much-deserved and sure-to-increase hype, we are still talking about a tiny sliver of total electricity production at 1.8%.  The vast majority of energy still comes from base loading sources like coal and nuclear, and wind cannot even begin to make a dent in consumption in this area until a large enough volume of turbines and farms are in place to offset the effect of the wind resource’s intermittency.  It goes without saying that wind power and other renewables must maintain or even increase their present growth rates to meaningfully mitigate the environmental impacts of energy production.

So with the U.S. at 35+ gigawatts of installed capacity and rising today, where do we stand in terms of worldwide wind energy users?

The answer: we’re #1!  Which makes sense, of course, as the U.S. remains the world’s largest economic superpower and largest consumer of energy.  And in addition to money and a seemingly endless appetite for energy, the U.S. also has a vast and still largely untapped wind resource, which suggests that now that we have overtaken China and the E.U. states to assume our rightful role as the world leader in wind energy utilization, we will probably remain in that position for the foreseeable future.  While it is nice to see the U.S. assuming a leading role here, and while we are seeing some manufacturing move back stateside as well, the next task is to get the U.S. offshore wind industry off the ground.  Offshore wind is a tremendous resource that has not been developed at all so far, and unlike other parts of the wind industry, none of the specific manufacturing capacity needed for offshore wind energy deployment exists in the U.S. currently, in spite of a large manufacturing base in related areas such as offshore oil and gas drilling, shipbuilding, and grid-building (including other uses of submarine transmission cables). 

Major potential areas of expansion exist where U.S. manufacturers could become leaders, particularly in offshore wind.  For example, very few manufacturers anywhere in the world today are building the high voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine transmission cables that would be the ideal type to use for medium-to-long distance transmission from offshore wind farms.  Instead, most European and other offshore wind installations have adapted HVAC cables primarily designed for other uses, which increases costs of long-distance transmission, results in power losses when used toward the limits of HVAC technology, and places severe constraints on how far from shore a wind farm can be.  The lack of manufacturing capacity in this area hence constrains our ability to take advantage of the considerable offshore wind resource, which also tends to become greater with increasing distance from the shore. Here is an area where the U.S. could fill a manufacturing vacuum, but it will not do so unless and until enough offshore wind projects are on the table on this continent for a manufacturer like GE to justify building manufacturing capacity for submarine HVDC cable at scale.  Otherwise, a European, Japanese or Chinese company will probably fill the gap in the next few years, and it will be one more opportunity the U.S. missed to become a leader in an emerging technology, and more engineering and manufacturing jobs will shift to overseas.

While great challenges and uncertainties remain, at this point, I feel comfortable enough with the past decade’s worth of data to make the following predictions: wind energy will achieve a 10% share of total U.S. electricity production (not just of installed capacity) by 2015, and 20% by 2020.  The second prediction allows for a slowing of the exponential growth rate once 10% is achieved.  Were today’s values sustained, the 20% mark would be reached by 2017, thirteen years in advance of informal goals set by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  Will these trends continue?  Nobody knows for certain today, but this much we do know: for the first time, advocates for renewable energy can truly say they are putting their money where their mouths are.