CNN Money, according to Kari M. at Climate Progress, is most optimistic about wind and efficiency among “green investment choices”, perceiving that both financial sectors are “overflowing with opportunity.”
[Unfortunately] the U.S. is trailing the world in terms of renewable energy technology and manufacturing. The is hard to come to terms with because it’s not natural for us to be lagging where there are so many exciting possibilities… We need to be investing more of our future into this industry – into research, development, and deployment, into capital, into manufacturing plants, and into these ‘green collar’ jobs.
One hold-up to rapid development of wind power in North America has been availability of wind turbines. The Climate Progress author is of the opinion that wind farm installation cannot be exported abroad, nor should turbine manufacturing or investment in those companies be shipped elsewhere.
The CNNmoney report reiterates how The Center for American Progress has framed as opportunities our energy and climate crises.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Johnson says that the wind industry’s new mantra is” Mine is bigger than yours.” (It must be a Texas thing.)
Italy’s Enel SpA and GE Energy Financial Services just finished a wind farm in Snyder, TX, that boasts the tallest turbines in the U.S. The massive towers soar 345 feet to take advantage of higher sustained wind speeds.
Snyder’s 63-megawatt farm is the first in the U.S. to use the giant 3-megawatt turbines, which have gained traction elsewhere in the world. Most other U.S projects use turbines about half as big. Like Sweetwater, just down the road from the Snyder farm: The sprawling complex is the biggest in the U.S. by capacity, even if it can’t boast of similar-sized equipment.
What’s interesting is GE’s growing agnosticism on whose blades it buys. GE Energy is the biggest U.S. maker of wind turbines, but GE Energy Financial Services is ponying up an undisclosed amount of cash to work with Enel at Snyder and in Smoky Hills, Kansas—and both windfarms use turbines made by Denmark’s Vestas, one of GE Energy’s rivals.
In both cases, the explanation can be found in the growing consolidation sweeping the sector.
The Snyder windfarm was originally developed by Windkraft Nord USA, the U.S. arm of a German wind-farm developer that worked with Vestas since its inception. WKN sold Snyder to Enel in 2006, part of an avalanche of acquisitions by European companies desperate to get a foothold in the fast-growing but highly-fragmented U.S. wind power market. Smoky Hills was planned by TradeWind Energy LLC, which Enel gobbled up last year. Spanish and Portuguese utilities also went hunting with a string of U.S. acquisitions last year.
Even without guaranteed government price support, the U.S. wind power sector has been the world’s hottest for three years running. GE Energy Financial Services, which manages $2 billion in renewable-energy assets, appears to have decided that grabbing market share is worth moving beyond GE’s own metal.
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Interestingly, the HAWT in the Climate Progress post is made by the German manufacturer, Enercon, which makes some of the largest currently made.
Gatineau, Canada Treehugger Michael Graham Richard informs that Enercon now defintely makes the world largest Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine: the E-126.
The E-126 should produce about 20,000,000 kwh per annum, enough to power about 5,000 European homes (less in North-America, of course).
The Enercon press release states:
Writing for Climate Progress, Bill Becker observes:
Treehugger from Gatineau, Canada, Michael Graham Richard has more about the growth of wind power in Texas.
Photo: Brian Harkin for The New York Times
Another post concerning wind power in Texas, this one from Kyle Weatherholtz.
“It’s worth mentioning,” Sustainblog commentator Kiashu noted, “that the electricity shortage in Texas was more to do with a jump in demand and failure of other sources than a drop from wind. Kiashu cited the following from Houston Chronicle reporter Tom Fowler:
Video: A short CBS special about wind farming in Texas
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[...] a follow-up on investments in wind and efficiency in the United States, this blog relays information from a post by James Fraser. In the Energy Blog [...]