Consumer Energy Alliance

Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization created to help expand the dialogue between the energy and consuming sectors to improve understanding of energy security, more effectively develop and use both renewable and oil & gas energy resources in an environmentally conscious manner, create sound energy policy and maintain stable energy prices for consumers.

(Part of) the answer is blowing in the wind

One of the nice things about wind energy being taken more seriously as a promising source of our country’s future electricity needs is that it has the ability to capture the public’s imagination, with images of towering wind turbines dotting our wide open spaces, as well as lots of catchy word plays.

Earlier this month, the American Wind Energy Association annual conference in Chicago generated lots of talk about wind power in the windy city, and about how the answer is blowing in the wind. (The answer to the nation’s energy problems, that is).

Indeed, the record attendance at this year’s AWEA conference suggests that wind power, long dismissed as a cottage industry of Holland or an unrealistic hippie dream, is rapidly gaining momentum. Thanks to advances in wind turbine technology, beneficial tax credits and a renewed interest in reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil, wind power has become a growth industry that created thousands of jobs last year and moved more homes onto this home-grown source of power that is infinite in supply. The Obama Administration has set a goal of producing 20% of the country’s electricity from wind by the year 2030, and by many accounts this looks like a realistic target.

But just like any industry, the wind power sector runs the risk of suffering setbacks because of the soft economy. Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, today one of the most vocal supporters of wind power, has delayed construction of his own massive wind power plant in Texas, while smaller players are suffering from a shortage of investors.

And like the wind itself, the wind power industry does not always move in the same direction. Despite all the factors supporting the industry today, wind power will not be adopted on a broad scale unless it is cost effective against traditional power sources like oil. When oil prices drop, the wind industry is more challenged to demonstrate its value.

So, while producing close to a third of the country’s electricity from power in just about 20 years would be a major, major breakthrough for an industry that has for too long been marginalized, there are a couple of important footnotes to keep in mind.

First, there is a real threat of future economic setbacks that could delay this goal. And second, even if the 30% mark is met or surpassed by 2030, that would leave a whole lot of electricity still needing to come from other sources, not to mention all the planes, trains and automobiles that don’t even run on electricity and can’t be supported by wind.

Which is why any effective energy policy must be an alliance of all different kinds of energy: big and small, new and old, traditional and alternative.

It doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as that old Bob Dylan song, but the truth is that only part of the answer is blowing in the wind.

Tags: American Wind Energy Association, CEA, CEA Energy Grass Roots, Consumer Energy Alliance, consumer energy alliance grass roots, jobs, Obama, oil, T. Boone Pickens, tax credits, wind energy, wind turbines

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 9:54 am and is filed under CEABlog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.