Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

Germany's ZF Group, a major manufacturer of drive train equipment, broke ground recently on a $90-million wind turbine gearbox factory in Gainesville, GA.

The new plant, company officials said, will employ 215 workers when it is fully operational in 2012.

At the same time, it offers yet another concrete answer (along with other wind equipment factories going up in Arkansas, South Carolina and elsewhere) to Congressional opponents of a national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES).

Those opponents have argued strenuously that an RES (a national requirement that utilities obtain a minimum percentage of their ...

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With the support of AWEA and wind industry sponsors, WINDPOWER will host its first ever KidWind Challenge--a competition where you (and the kids) can design, build and test turbine blades in an actual wind tunnel!

Participants will test their turbines in the KidWind Wind Tunnel, a professional wind tunnel with live data monitoring software recording their turbine power output. Come watch as middle and high school students test their engineering and scientific prowess as they build the most powerful and elegant student wind turbines ever constructed ... at least, the most powerful and elegant under 4 ...

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... is sent up nicely by The New Yorker magazine with the cover of its latest issue. The cover depicts a pilgrim perched on a whale, tilting at the offshore windmills with a Don Quixote-style lance. It's a perfect lampooning of the incomprehensible nine-year NIMBY campaign against the Cape Wind project, which will provide years of pollution-free electricity to a region that for years has depended heavily for its electricity on imported fossil fuels.

Why offshore wind?

- The U.S. offshore wind industry will build on the success and the lessons learned from the nearly 20 years of experience in Europe to provide clean, pollution-free, electricity along the coasts and in the Great Lakes.

- American manufacturers have recently announced plans to build ...

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The underlying theme at the Good Jobs Green Jobs conference in Washington this week was, “Wind works.” But workers once again risk being the victims of broken policy.

The fact is that an unstable renewables policy led to an 80 percent drop in the industry’s startups three times in the last decade, in terms of megawatts and jobs. We need the right renewable policies, especially a renewable electricity standard (RES), to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We have 85,000 people erecting turbines, making bolts, transporting blades and otherwise showing support for all of us working in wind. They want jobs with a future. The wind industry, if it gets the right policies, will continue to provide them. We need to keep our eye on what’s important: the women and men ...

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The New York Times's Matt Wald reports in his blog today on a seemingly surprising coalition of utilities and elected officials that opposes expansion of the nation's electric transmission system. In our view, expressed by Manager of Transmission Policy Michael Goggin, the truth is far less surprising--it's a group of companies using their monopoly power to keep inexpensive wind-generated electricity from flowing into their systems, reducing their profits, and saving their customers money. Check out Michael's response in the second comment for more details.

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By Emily Caruso
Renewables Communications Leader
Wind Services & Solar
GE Energy

This week, a 40-meter (131-foot) blade manufactured by Molded Fiber Glass Industries for GE’s 1.5-MW wind turbine began its journey from Aberdeen, S.D. toward its final destination--Dallas--in time for WINDPOWER 2010.

The nearly 2,500-mile “Capture the Wind” tour is focused on building greater awareness of the benefits of renewable energy technologies, the impact wind power has on our daily lives, and the need for stable federal policy.

Over the next four weeks, the Capture the Wind tour will make several stops in local communities, ...

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Guest blog by John B. Cadogan, Ph.D.

The issue of wind energy's contribution to Denmark's electric supply arose in response to an op-ed by Robert Bryce in Sunday's Washington Post in which Bryce alleged that the displacement of carbon dioxide emissions in Denmark by wind energy was a myth. The Huffington Post published a response by Matt Wasson, Director of Programs for Appalachian ...

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The decision by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to approve the 130-turbine Cape Wind project represents a huge boost to the U.S. wind industry, not just the offshore component.

AWEA CEO Denise Bode noted, “Such forward-thinking decisions are necessary for the U.S. to realize the many environmental and economic benefits of offshore wind. The U.S. offshore wind industry will build on the success and the lessons learned from the nearly 20 years of experience in Europe to provide clean, pollution-free, electricity along the coasts and in the Great Lakes.”

Salazar’s decision was not only good energy policy, it was gutsy politics, and signals a willingness by the federal government to take a stand for renewable energy in the face of a decade of local opposition, ...

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Over the next 28 days, a 131-foot long wind turbine blade designed for GE’s 1.5-megawatt wind turbine will be making its way from South Dakota to Dallas--a total distance of 2,436 miles across 9 states. The road trip began yesterday in Aberdeen, S.D., at the Molded Fiber Glass factory where wind turbine blades are manufactured.

At stops along the route, citizens will be asked to sign the blade, making it an unusually graphic petition in support of renewable energy. People will also have a chance to get their pictures taken alongside the blade. The purpose of the trip is to highlight the value of renewable energy, and the need for policies that will allow it to expand, resulting in less pollution and more manufacturing jobs in the United States.

“Alternative ...

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This past weekend the Washington Post Outlook section published a piece of anti-renewable energy propaganda penned by a fossil fuel advocate. The piece purported to be just another in Outlook's 5 Myths series, designed to debunk conventional wisdom, but it appeared more to be an advertisement for Big Energy that got lost on the way to the reject pile.

Fortunately we can point you to a deft and surgical evisceration of the Outlook-sponsored Myths. It is written by Matt Wasson, who is an ecologist and the director of programs for Appalachian Voices. He notes that the author of the Outlook ...

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