WIND Resource Assets
Time makes solar power to become the world's dominant mainstream energy supply
Throughout the time it takes solar power to become the world’s dominant mainstream energy supply, the second most abundant solar-derived renewable resource, wind power, could supply most of the world’s expanding new utility and mobility energy services. According to two independent comprehensive assessments in 2012,
“There is enough power in Earth’s winds to be a primary source of near-zero-emission electric power as the global economy continues to grow through the twenty-first century.”
WIND Resource Assets
In recent proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Wind power has become spectacularly successful, technologically, economically and financially, and solar power is repeating wind’s success in the recent decade. In 2006, for example, China had only 3,000 MW of installed capacity, and was a tiny global player. By late 2012 China surpassed 70,000 MW, reaching nearly one-third of installed global capacity – a 25-fold increase in six years while the rest of the world only expanded by a factor of 2.6.
A 2009 joint assessment by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Tsinghua University’s Department of Environmental Science and Engineering concluded that China’s favorable onshore wind resources could provide nearly 25 trillion kWh of electricity annually, more than five times national consumption in 2012. The team also made a key point, that assuming a 10-year feed-in tariff payment per kWh comparable to what is currently being offered, “wind could accommodate all the demand for electricity projected for 2030, about twice current consumption.”
The Harvard team estimates wind power can supply 40 times world consumption of electricity, and more than five times total global use of all energy. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Michael McElroy et al conclude, “that a network of land-based 2.5 MW turbines restricted to non-forested, ice-free, non-urban areas operating at as little as 20% of their rated capacity could supply more than 40 times current worldwide consumption of electricity, [and] more than 5 times total global use of energy in all forms.”
Available wind resources on the U.S. Great Plains were estimated to be as much as 16 times total current U.S. power consumption. The land footprint of wind farms are remarkably small. Analysis indicate the several million wind turbines that could produce as much power as the U.S. currently consumes would take up less than three percent of the Great Plains region. The wind royalties paid to site the wind farms would generate twice as much revenues for the region than farming and ranching currently generate occupying 75 percent of the Great Plains!
Wind power is an established least-cost-and-risk power supply.
Both the United States and China could steadily displace all their current and proposed coal power plants, and most natural gas power, with their wind resources. China has current plans to construct 558,000 MW of coal plants (the US 17,000 MW), and the US projects building 141,000 MW of natural gas plants . When wind (and solar) are phased in with utility bill-reducing efficiency opportunities, the system costs and risks of delivering electricity should be comparable to or less than continuing dependence on coal or natural gas plants powering inefficient devices.