Must read: Bush DOE says wind can be 20% of U.S. power by 2030 — with no breakthroughs
Monday, May 12th, 2008The Bush administration has signed off on a stunning new report, “20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply.”
I am working on a big wind article for mid-week, but here are the key conclusions of what is easily the most comprehensive and credible report released on windpower in a decade:
- Annual installations need to increase by only a factor of three from current levels by 2018.
- Costs of integrating intermittent wind power into the grid are modest. 20 percent wind can be reliably integrated into the grid for less than 0.5 cents per kWh.
- No material constraints currently exist. Although demand for copper, fiberglass and other raw materials will increase, achieving 20 percent wind is not limited by the availability of raw materials.
- This would require 300,000 MW of wind, delivering electricity for about 6 to 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour, unsubsidized (i.e. no federal tax credit) and including the cost of transmission to access existing power lines within 500 miles of wind resource [new nuclear is currently about 15 cents/kwh (see here)].
- The 20% Wind Scenario could require an incremental investment of as little as $43 billion NPV [net present value] more than the base-case no new Wind Scenario. This would represent less than 0.06 cent (6 one-hundredths of 1 cent) per kilowatt-hour of total generation by 2030, or roughly 50 cents per month per household.
The benefits the country gets for this small incremental investment are staggering:


For a wider eco-conscious community in this country, the aftermath will be remembered as the first time a U.S. town has been built (or rebuilt) entirely green, and done under national attention. From the wreckage, Greensburg is emerging as a pioneer in community-scale green building and eco-development, symbolizing in sorts a better hope for tomorrow. Greensburg has become, metaphorically, the ultimate 





