Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

 If you were watching the NFL playoffs this weekend, you might have seen this ad for Duracell batteries. The brilliant 30-second spot demonstrates the ability of wind turbines to help deliver a powerful, positive message, even when the subject is only tangentially related to wind. It is batteries that are being advertised, after all, and they could be powering anything--a digital camera, for instance. But here they are being used to power a voltmeter, a key piece of safety equipment used by wind technicians when they are performing maintenance on a turbine. But wait--there's more. The technicians using the meter--and who are photographed standing dramatically atop the towers--are students at a wind technician training ...

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It is common practice for the government to release bad news on a Friday, hoping that no one will notice. But today the Obama Administration announced good news: the award of $2.3 billion worth of tax credits for renewable energy manufacturers, including $350 million in awards that will be used to help finance at least 50 new wind energy manufacturing facilities.

The awards are another piece of the economic recovery package that was enacted soon after Obama took office, and that has played a significant role in keeping the wind industry moving forward despite the recession and credit crunch.

Today's announcement also is a reminder that, in addition to being an inexhaustible and non-polluting energy source, wind energy has the potential to create thousands of ...

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The word from Denver is that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decided not to run for governor of Colorado. This is good news for wind energy advocates, as Salazar has been a major force in the Obama Administration's pro-wind policies. Just this week, for example, he set a deadline for deciding on the fate of the Cape Wind project offshore Cape Cod. Earlier decisions have been aimed at streamlining the decision process for citing wind on federal lands, including the Outer Continental Shelf.

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China's effort to get serious about renewable energy (and particularly wind) moved to a new level during the holidays, with the announcement of a new law that, according to the Wall Street Journal, "will force powerful state-owned electric grid companies, responsible for distributing electricity from power plants, to buy all the electricity generated from renewable sources even when it is more expensive and more complicated to use than electricity from coal-fired plants."

The new action, rolled out in the wake of the Copenhagen climate conference in mid-December, is seen as an effort by the Chinese government to be seen as taking concrete action on the climate issue.

At the same time, it ...

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According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), renewable energy sources provided just over 10 percent of both U.S. energy (10.51%) and electricity (10.21%) during the first nine months of 2009.

That's the word from the Sun Day Campaign, a Takoma Park, MD-based nonprofit that tracks the EIA quarterly reports and extracts info on renewables (biofuels, biomass, geothermal, hydro, solar and wind).

Items from the group's most recent release, dated December 28, 2009:

- The percentage of total energy supplied by renewables is expanding, slowly but surely, from 9.67% during the same period in 2007, to 10.12% in 2008, to last year's 10.51%. The gain from 2008 to 2009 amounts to 4.1% in absolute terms (0.228 quadrillion BTUs, an amount ...

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The contrast could not have been more pronounced. First, in response to an issue raised by two Massachusetts Native American tribes, the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places, part of the National Park Service, issued a seven-page statement explaining why all of Nantucket Sound was eligible to be included on the Register. (The tribes want to protect ancestral burial grounds that were covered by the Sound centuries ago.)

Then, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar issued a three-paragraph statement explaining that the time had come for a decision on the Cape Wind project. Salazar summoned the stakeholders to Washington next week to come up with “common-sense agreement on actions that could be taken to minimize and mitigate Cape Wind’s potential impacts on ...

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2009 closed with a figurative bang in the wind integration field, with Spain setting a new national record December 30--54% of instantaneous electricity supply.

Spain's latest achievement (it had reached 53% during November) underlined the fact that the Iberian peninsula has become a global leader in wind power's use. At a workshop in November, Portugal's national utility system operator, REN, announced that Portugal had reached a peak level of 71% of electricity supply from wind on November ...

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 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact: Shawna Seldon (917) 971 7852 (cell)
December 28, 2009 Shawna@rosengrouppr.com

AMERICAN WIND ENERGY ASSOCIATION (AWEA):
WIND POWER TRENDS TO WATCH FOR IN 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the nation looks ahead to 2010, renewable energy will be central to the economic and energy issues that dominate the political agenda. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has identified some trends and indicators to watch:

• Wind Power: Second-largest Source of New U.S. Power Generating Capacity for Sixth Year in a Row? While wind makes up only about 2% of total electricity supply, it is one of the largest sources of new power generation ...

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 The wind industry had a good year in 2009, adding at least 7,000 MW of capacity, despite the poor economy. It followed a spectacular 2008 (8,500 MW) and terrific 2007(5,200 MW). What’s next? How does wind energy sustain the momentum and become an even more important part of the energy landscape? How does it reach its potential to help solve major energy, economic and security challenges facing the United States?

In some ways, the 2010 agenda is already set. AWEA and its members will keep working on the key items unfinished from the past year—first, getting the Congress to adopt a strong Renewable Electricity Standard, which will drive up demand. Second, we need to keep be pushing hard for transmission reform, both in Congress, and in state and federal regulatory agencies. ...

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 As AWEA prepares to take a holiday break and re-energize for 2010, it's worth looking back on 2009, a year that saw many twists and turns, and stops and starts in the industry, but most of all, signs of long-term vitality, despite short-term obstacles.

A few of the good things that happened:

1. Congress passed the economic recovery package, which included an economic lifeline for the wind industry.
2. Installed U.S. wind capacity continued to grow, despite the poor economy.
3. Wind energy finally got a champion at the U.S. Department of the Interior, which will help offshore wind and projects on public lands in the West.
4. New research is on our side on wind's health impacts (sound) and impacts on property values.
5. Small wind ...

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