Windmill - Alternative Power in Green Energy: Wind Energy: Eco20/20

Windmill - Alternative Power in Green Energy

Lessening our dependence on fossil fuels is critical to the health of all living things and one can't entirely disregard the political and economic benefits of being adequately energy independent. Wind energy will definitely play a part in achieving that independence and lessening our impact on the environment.

Wind has become one of the most promising new energy sources in the search for an alternative to fossil fuel-generated electricity. Last year alone the United States increased its wind energy capacity by 10,000 megawatts. That is enough energy to power over five large American cities (think Miami for example). That may not seem like much, but if wind continues to grow at its current rate 20% of all generated power in the United States could come from wind by the year 2035.

History

The windmill has been around for over a millennia. The Dutch were responsible for many of the innovations that transformed the windmill into something like we recognize as today's windmill. For a long time the primary use of the windmill was to pump excess water from area which had flooded. It took nearly 500 years of refinement before the windmill resembles what we recognize it as today.

Electricity from Wind

Many countries have made large investments in wind energy in recent years. The United States, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and India are among the world's leading nations in terms of investment and development of wind energy technologies. There is a city in Spain, Navarro, produces 23% of its electricity through wind power. The entire country of Denmark now generates 8 percent of its electricity from wind power.

Wind power is growing at an astonishing rate. From 2007 to 2009 the US alone installed over 25 GW of new wind energy capacity. Wind energy production in Canada has increased nearly ten-fold in the past 6 years. One hundred and eighteen new offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of 333 MW were connected to the European grid in the first half of 2010 alone.

Wind Energy Jobs

On the campaign trail, then Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama promised 5 million green jobs created over the next decade. While significant investments have been made in green technology over the past two years and in wind specifically it has not produced many of those 5 million jobs as of yet. Of the jobs created, fewer still have been skilled, good paying blue-collar jobs. The blame does not fall entirely onto the Presidents shoulders here. Surely the economy played its part as overall demand for electricity dropped throughout the United States.

With the continued investment in green technology and in particular wind energy generation not waning it is only a matter of time before demand increases which should spur new rounds of hiring. These machines, as advanced as they are cannot manage and maintain themselves.

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