Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

I had a chance to catch up with USDA Senior Energy Advisor Sarah Bittleman at the 2011 Agricultural Outlook Forum on February 25. She talked about USDA’s efforts to help farmers and ranchers lower their electricity costs with renewable energy and the role AWEA is playing in increasing access to wind power across America. But she also spoke about how growing up on a farm in Upstate New York shaped the way she thinks about self-sustaining rural communities and renewable energy.

Bittleman was from one of the only Jewish families in her area, but that didn’t stop her family from using their land to start a thriving Christmas tree business. When she wasn’t helping sell Christmas trees, she was chopping wood for the family’s furnace, something she said gave her “a real feeling” ...

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From the wind energy industry's perspective, greater electrification of the transportation sector to allow clean, affordable, homegrown wind power to directly power our vehicles would be an excellent long-term strategy to reduce America's dependence on imported oil. While wind energy is already significantly reducing air pollution and the fossil fuel dependence of our economy, those savings would be expanded even further if wind energy could directly reduce the use of oil in the transportation sector.

Our in-house statistical experts were asked recently to come up with some numbers on what it would take to provide the additional electricity if half of the U.S. auto fleet were composed of plug-in electric hybrid autos.

Here's what they told us:

If ...

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Wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa and shipbuilder Northrop Grumman officially launched the Offshore Wind Technology Center in Chesapeake, Va., last week with the aim of developing a new 5-MW offshore turbine design. The companies said their goal is to combine Gamesa's multi-megawatt turbine experience with Northrop Grumman's knowledge of the relatively harsh operating environment at sea.

The Center currently is staffed by a team of nearly 50 engineers who will be responsible for ...

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Among the many articles written (and still more to come) in the wake of last week's rolling blackouts in Texas are two well worth reading.

The first, by Eli Kintisch of Science magazine, is entitled "When Wind Is Reliable: Turbines Help Texans Avoid the Dark," touches on the fact that wind energy provided 3,500 MW to 4,000 MW during the worst of the Feb. 2 power shortage, and adds, "There's also a cost issue there: wind variability is generally fairly predictable, so so-called nonspinning reserves can be deployed to react when wind power resources are expected to ...

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Last night, while the world was busy with real news, ABC News presented a fictional account of how the Obama Administration's Recovery Act was being used to ship jobs overseas. Apparently no one at ABC or American University, which sponsored the bogus reporting directly to ABC, understands the way the global economy works--namely, that objects being built in these United States may not be made entirely within our shores. (Like those SUV's that ABC crews use....That's why they call it World News, folks.) Below is an analysis by AWEA's numbers guru Liz Salerno, which ABC declined to post on their site. It shows exactly what was wrong with this story.

She has already provided this information over the past several months to ABC and American University's pseudo investigative ...

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By Peter Kelley, AWEA VP of Public Affairs

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s new chairman, Fred Upton, R-MI, was questioned today on his energy agenda for this Congress by National Journal editor Ron Brownstein, in the first of a planned series with new congressional leaders called, “Conversations with the Chair.”

AWEA was among the cosponsors of the event, held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. (The event may be watched online in its entirety at the National Journal Web site. For another interview with Mr. Upton the day before, see

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In a move to accelerate the development of an offshore wind energy industry in the United States, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu yesterday announced plans to fast-track four offshore areas for potential leasing by the U.S. government.

AWEA welcomed the announcement. Said AWEA Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs Tom Vinson, “The offshore wind industry needs policy certainty to justify investing the billions of dollars necessary to continue growing this industry here at ...

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Today's Dallas Morning News has a thorough and detailed accounting of the rolling blackouts that took place in Texas Feb. 2, including an hour-by-hour timeline of the event. A few highlights:

- "[T]he breakdown of a cluster of coal-fired plants in Central Texas was at the heart" of the electricity generation shortage that led to the blackouts.

- During the blackouts, wholesale electricity prices spiked from the normal 7 cents per kilowatt-hour to a whopping ...

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact: Michael Goggin, 202-302-9670 cell, mgoggin@awea.org
Friday, February 4, 2011

Wind Energy Helps Save Day as Fossil Fuel Plants Falter and Electricity Demand Surges
Across Plains Due to Winter Storm

Across the Great Plains this week, wind energy played a major role in helping keep the lights on as the region dealt with a record winter storm.

Over the last few days we’ve learned more about the events that led to the rolling blackouts that occurred Wednesday morning in Texas. Wind energy played a critical role in limiting the severity of the blackouts, providing enough electricity to keep the power on for about three million typical households. ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, has confirmed that wind energy ...

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by Liz Salerno, AWEA Director - Industry Data & Analysis

As the national discussion over energy policy begins anew, the topic of subsidies is again being raised by critics of clean, renewable energy sources. A few thoughts from our perspective:

* With the deficit at record levels, hypocrisy has no role in the discussion of eliminating Federal incentives for energy. A level playing field in the energy sector is what the renewable sector is seeking.

* The only energy sources with no sunset on their subsidies and a permanent place in the tax code are fossil fuels. For nearly 100 years, the U.S. government has dumped well over $500 billion into subsidizing fossil fuels, and the subsidies remain permanent. Yet, still unable to stand ...

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