Recently the Associated Press did a story ~ titled Enough Wind to Power the World
Apparently Two new studies by US researchers found that the earth has enough wind to power the world .
However the research has a narrow focus dealing only in theory and not looking at the financial pitfalls of industrial wind . The story pointed out that other experts note that it would be too costly to put up all the necessary wind turbines and build a system that could transmit energy to all consumers.
There are additional considerations as well for instance, the feasibility of wind powering the world considering the land mass required.
A statement in this story caught my attention,
a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering,
said that the earth could be powered by wind turbines If there were 100 new wind turbines for every existing turbine .
Would this be possible?
At the end of 2011 there were 199,064 industrial wind turbines spinning globally.
Multiply that by 100 and you would have roughly 20 million wind turbines.
Each wind turbine requires a land mass of approx. 40 acres, multiply that by 20 million and you end up with 800 million acres of land required to power the earth by Wind turbines .
To get an Idea of how many acres that is, the total land mass in NY State equals 35 million acres.
In the US there is a total land mass of 2.4 Billion acres. The 800 million acres required for the 20 million industrial wind turbines would be equivalent to one third of the total land mass of the United States.
The land mass required to power the earth by wind turbines makes it an unrealistic proposition.
Sources: Enough wind to power the world From the Buffalo News
3 comments:
Yeah, and there's enough sunlight to power our planet, too. But, if you look at what it cost of going 100% renewables, we could nothing more than sit in a well lit room and wish for a better life.
Take a good look at Wolfe Island. Look at what the speculation has done to your town.
What a horrible and unnecessary thing to do to our world.
Unfortunately "feasibility" is a factor completely lost on the green movement dreamers.
They continue to think (want to believe) that a sprinking of wind farms here and there is going to make some real energy impact. They don't and they won't.
When you press them real hard, some of the hard core green movement wind proponents will try to tell you that the value of wind farms is also "symbolic" - that is, that wind tirbnes act as visible reminders to all of us that we need to move beyond where we are in power generation.
Horse crap! You want to put up something symbolic? Do it in downtown Albany - not in the Thousand Islands!
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