Wind power is the fastest-growing energy generation industry in the world. (AFP Photo)

Despite Australian PM John Howard’s call for a “full-blooded debate“ about energy, greenhouse and uranium mining, there has been little discussion about renewable energy sources such as wind power.
Wind power is the fastest-growing energy generation industry in the world. Notwithstanding a lack of government support, across the world the industry has grown at an average rate of 29% over the past 10 years, concentrated in California in the US, Spain, Germany, Denmark and several other European countries. During that time, the amount of wind energy production has risen from 5000 megawatts (MW) to more than 60,000 MW. By 2010, the amount is expected to double to 120,000 MW, Greenleft.org reported.
Wind power has become more technologically advanced and reliable since it emerged commercially around 25 years ago. One of the most important advancements has been the evolution of larger turbines, which has had a couple of advantages. First, the most consistent and strongest airflow is found higher above the ground; lower-altitude breezes are generally weaker and more erratic. Whereas wind farms used to be viable only in special areas with excellent year-round breezes, newer large turbines are suited to a far wider range of locations.
The second advantage of large turbines is that they generate more electricity. The latest generation of mass produced wind turbines has a blade diameter of 90 meters, with the generator, a nacelle, sitting on top of an 80 or 105 meter-high tower. Such turbines consistently produce about 3 million MW of electricity per unit, and cost about $3.6 million each (or about $1200 per kilowatt).
A South Australian wind farm recently placed an order for 53 V90 3 MW turbines. Vestas, of Denmark, now has a factory in Tasmania that is equipped to produce several types of large turbines. Next generation turbines are larger again, with 5 MW turbines with a 126-metre blade diameter.
While the reliability of wind power has improved, problems remain with consistent supply. One of these is overloading the grid with electricity in times of high wind and, to a lesser extent, under-powering the grid in low wind.
A South Australian consortium is investigating using “burst power“ by running electricity-hungry seawater desalination plants during peak wind power periods as a way of “soaking up“ excess power.
The concern that wind power inadvertently kills birds can be minimized by ensuring that the turbines are not built in known flight paths, or near nesting areas and waterholes. Wildlife groups are generally well aware of the benefits of wind power, and are happy to let authorities know about these critical locations. Some birds and bats will still be killed, but only a tiny fraction compared to those killed each year by vehicles.
Solutions to community concerns might include building wind farms on private land, where farmers can still graze livestock and grow crops beneath the turbines while earning lease payments for hosting the turbines, and by placing the turbines along roadways and the edges of large public reserves. Turbines do emit some blade noise, but modern models are much quieter due to improved blade aerodynamics.
Some argue that turbines are “unsightly“, but these anti-wind groups, often supported by the nuclear industry, should consider how aesthetically pleasing deformed babies and cancer victims are.
The electricity grid in Australia, like most around the world, is based around a few centralized power plants that feed high voltages out to a progressively lighter network of transmission lines.
Wind farms built around the perimeter of existing power networks would need to be properly linked back into the grid, requiring the construction of new cable infrastructure. Any nuclear power plant would require a similar investment in transmission lines to link them back into the grid. For wind power to be the dominant source of power, it would require a substantial restructure of the grid, and technological advances to further refine the reliability of wind power.
However Ben Carmichael of Vestas Australia told Green Left Weekly that, in the immediate future, Australia could derive up to 20% of its national electricity needs from wind without a massive overhaul of the transmission network and without compromising the reliability of supply. According to Carmichael, 20% wind power nationally would require the construction of about 2500 V90 turbines, or equivalent, at a cost of around $9 billion.
Compare this to the financial costs of nuclear energy. To achieve a situation where 20% of current national electricity production was nuclear power would require the construction of at least five typical nuclear power plants, each with a capacity of around 1000-1500 MW (a typical reactor size).
Based on several recently commissioned third-generation reactors in Japan and South Korea, these reactors would cost between $1500 and $2000 per kilowatt to commission, and therefore between $11.25-$15 billion in total.
Clearly, nuclear power is more expensive. Once built, the plants require fuel rods, an additional cost, and these must be enriched at a separate facility, which would cost upwards of $500 million.
Nuclear power has higher operational and maintenance costs compared to wind power, and nuclear power stations take longer to commission (seven to 10 years) than wind turbines (three to six months once delivered). More carbon dioxide is emitted in the construction of a nuclear power plant, and in the enrichment of fuel rods, than in the construction of wind towers.
Once a wind turbine is up and running it will have generated as much clean energy after six months as “dirty“ energy used in its manufacture. It takes about seven years for a nuclear power station to generate more carbon dioxide-free electricity than was spent building the plant and getting it operational.
Over the lifetime of a wind turbine, it will generate 17-39 times the amount of energy as was used to build it. Nuclear power plants produce only about 16 times the energy used to build them.
Each 1000 MW nuclear power generator would produce about 33 tonnes of highly radioactive waste per year, which would then need to be stored at additional cost, reprocessed at an even greater cost, or dumped--the cheapest and most likely option for dollar-saving corporations.
If Australia has its own nuclear power plants, nuclear waste dumps and enrichment facilities, it will be easier to argue for it to become a world dumping ground for nuclear waste. If Australia leases enriched fuel rods to other nations and takes the waste back, a stockpile of dangerous nuclear waste will accrue.

According to Business Week, ethanol is the ’white-knight fuel’. Recent studies from the University of Minnesota claim biodiesel is even better.
Both contribute to the very problems they seek to address.
As the world heads towards the peak in global oil production, we find ourselves desperate for replacement liquid fuels. Environmentalists want a closed-cycle carbon-neutral energy source; farmers want a fair price for their produce, while car companies and mainstream politicians are looking for a way to promote a greener vision of unabated consumerism, Energybukketin.com reported.
However, despite all the hype, we must stop and consider carefully before rushing headlong into what might prove a tragic irony of the most devastating proportions. In pursuing an apparently ’green’ fuel we may inflict more damage than we circumvent.
According to Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown’s calculations, the amount of grain needed to fill a single 4WD 100-litre petrol tank with biofuel could feed a person for an entire year. As new ethanol refinement plants have come online in recent years, food production has not risen to meet the added demand. Biofuel demand is already creating a global grain prices ’chain reaction’.
Mainstream biofuels advocates, many with the best intentions, are therefore essentially promoting the radical expansion of industrial agriculture, which, as I argued last week, is the most destructive practice humans have so far inflicted on the biosphere. On top of this, our food system has long been a voracious consumer of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel energy is used to produce pesticides and herbicides, in machinery fuel and production, in electricity for cooking, processing and packaging, and in transportation and irrigation. In the US, it takes around 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver every calorie of food to the consumer. Around one third of the proteins in our bodies are the indirect product of the nitrogen fertilizers industry, which uses natural gas as its feedstock.
If these unseen fossil fuels are embodied in our food, two obvious questions present themselves. Do industrially produced biofuels actually deliver more energy than it takes to produce them? And, how are we going to even feed ourselves in an energy-scarce world, let alone produce biofuels?
The first question is a point of some contention.
Professors Tad Patzek from the University of California, Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell University say no; in everything from switchgrass to corn ethanol, more energy is used than is produced. They are harsh critics of an industry Patzek refers to as ’laundering fossil fuels’. It’s a position supported by the fact that in 2005 the US National Corn Growers Association called on the US Government to increase natural gas drilling to support ethanol producers.
If Pimentel and Patzek are correct, then these so-called green fuels are worse than their fossil fuel equivalents. But their findings are not without controversy.
Biofuel advocates claim that ethanol and biodiesel produced from corn and soybeans offer energy returns in the realms of 30 to 70 per cent more energy than is invested. This concept of Energy Returned on Energy Invested is crucial. Historically, oil has offered returns of up to 100 to one. That is, for every barrel of oil used in exploration and production, 100 barrels were brought to market (although that figure is probably below 10 to one now).
A society based on a resource that offers returns as low as 1.7 to one--one of the more optimistic levels claimed by ethanol promoters--would look profoundly different to anything we know today. In such a society, the biofuels industry and the essential services which support it would use 10 units of energy for every seven units available to the rest of society. So, even if we take the optimistic figures, we are still faced with a serious problem.
On the other hand, some of what we might traditionally consider to be unenvironmentally friendly practices may turn out to be our best options.
Former forest protestor and a natural resource manager, Mark Feltrin, promotes gasifying wood (where wood is heated without the presence of oxygen, releasing flammable gases) for heat and electricity production.
In the same breath, Feltrin talks about the importance of integrating ourselves into the Australian ecology. The juxtaposition might sound unfathomable, yet similar perspectives have been put forward by other serious environmentalists, from permaculture co-originator David Holmgren, and former Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) scientist, biofuels expert and co-founder of the Victorian Greens, Chris Mardon.
As a nation, it’s difficult for us to imagine sustainable forestry. ’Currently we deal with forestry in the same way we deal with mining for coal’, says Feltrin. Yet in Europe and other parts of the world there are long established cultures of sustainable harvests and caring for forests for future generations.
David Holmgren says that carefully managed forestry is the most viable source of biofuels. However, the production of methanol from wood or cellulosic crop wastes could produce very substantial quantities, albeit at a higher cost than petrol is now.’
These efforts would require decades of reafforestation and investment, and while they may soften our fall at the end of the age of cheap oil, they cannot support the continuation of a full-blown consumer society.
’The production of biofuels on farms to ensure farmers can plough, sow and harvest food for Australians and our customer abroad is a prudent and wise move in an energy scarce world,’ says Holmgren. ’However, the idea that we should plough more land or reduce food production so Australians can continue to go shopping for food they could more efficiently produce at home, is just one of the many mad ideas that has currency as we contemplate the peak and decline of global energy supply.’

Solar power can deliver electricity to more than 2 billion people, provide over 2 million jobs with an annual investment of 113 billion euros ($143 billion) by 2025, according to a report just published by Greenpeace International and the European Photovoltaic Industry Association.
The report, titled “SolarGeneration“, also explains that 350 million tons of CO2 emissions would be cut--the equivalent amount from 140 coal power stations and by 2040, solar electricity could provide over 16% of the global demand, GreenBiz.com reported.
“Solar energy is on the brink of leading the highly competitive consumer energy market, therefore the industry must invest further now in mass production to bring the costs down,“ said Teske. “The next two years are crucial for solar electricity to move out of the niche market and into mainstream energy production where it belongs. For the expansion of solar power to be successful, commitment from not only the industry but also Governments must play their part in the energy revolution. The industry is ready - where are the Governments?“
In 2005 the total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems around the world passed the landmark figure of 5000MW (= 10 average size coal power plants). Global shipðments of PV cells and modules have been growing at an average annual rate of more than 40% for the past few years. Such has been the growth in the solar electricity industry that business only of the European PV industry in 2005 was worth more than Û 5 billion; on a global scale the industry’s turnover was approximately Û10 billion.
“In 2006 the solar industry will invest well over 1 billion Euros along the whole value chain in new solar factories and R&D in order to increase the economy of scale and to lower the costs for solar photovoltaic systems,“ said Dr. Winfried Hoffmann, President of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association and member of the managing committee of SCHOTT Solar. “The global photovoltaic industry is ready to invest even more for years to come, but there must be a stable political framework for the next ten years to enable this investment to pay off.“
Greenpeace International and the European Photovoltaic Industry Association are urging Governments to secure those investments with support programs. The most successful scheme is a “feed-in tariff“ which guarantees a specific price for each Kilowatt-hour fed into the grid. The “feed-in policy“ has already been introduced in 41 countries, states and provinces enabling consumers to operate a solar system on their rooftop economically. In addition legally binding targets for the share of renewable energy in the EU for 2015 and 2020 are urgently needed.
Competition among the major manufacturers has become inðcreasingly intense, with new players entering the market as the potential for PV opens up. The worldwide photovoltaic industry, particularly in Europe and Japan, is investing heavily in new production facilities and technologies. At the same time, politiðcal support for the development of solar electricity has led to far-reaching promotion frameworks being put in place in a number of countries, notably Germany, Japan, the US and China.
“The best protection against escalating electricity prices is installing your own solar modules on your roof,“ said Teske. “’Distributed energy’ from solar panels will save billions of tons of CO2 emissions and guarantee stable electricity prices for families around the world. The day you install a solar generator on your roof, is independence day from your energy bill.“
The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) and Greenpeace have produced this third edition of Solar Generation to update our understanding of the contribution that solar power can make to the world’s energy supply. This joint initiative adopted the title “SolarGeneration“ because it aims to define the role that solar electricity will play in the lives of a population born today and developing into an important energy consumption group.

Purdue University researchers are using genetic tools to design trees that can readily and inexpensively yield the substances needed to produce ethanol. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research is funding the $1.4 million, three-year study.
A hybrid poplar tree is the basis for the research that is part of the DOE’s goal to replace 30% of the fossil fuel used annually in the US for transportation with biofuels by 2030, Renewableenergyaccess.com reported.
The Purdue faculty members Clint Chapple, Richard Meilan and Michael Ladisch are focused on a compound in cell walls called lignin that contributes to plants’ structural strength, but which hinders extraction of cellulose. Cellulose is the sugar-containing component needed to make the ethanol.
Purdue scientists and experts at the US departments of Agriculture and Energy say corn can only be part of the solution to the problem of replacing fossil fuel. In 2005 ethanol accounted for only 4 billion gallons of the 140 billion gallons of US transportation fuel used--less than 3%. About 13% of the nation’s corn crop was used for that production.
“We need a bioenergy crop that can grow many places year-round,“ Meilan said. “The genus Populus includes about 30 species that grow across a wide climatic range from the subtropics in Florida to sub-alpine areas in Alaska, northern Canada and Europe.“
To advance production of non-fossil fuels, Chapple and Meilan are using genetic tools to modify the poplar and then study how the alterations changed the plants’ cell walls. Meilan also is attempting to find ways to produce trees that are reproductively sterile so they are unable to transfer introduced traits to wild trees.
“Poplar is a low-maintenance crop; plant it and wait seven years to harvest it,“ Meilan said. “You’re not applying pesticides every year; you’re not trampling all over the site every year and compacting the soil. You’re allowing nutrients to recycle every year when the leaves fall and degrade.“
Approximately 10 tons of poplar could be grown per acre annually, representing 700 gallons of ethanol. Changing the lignin composition could increase the annual yield to 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, according to experts. Planted on 110 million acres of unused farmland, this could replace 80 percent of the transportation fossil fuel consumed in the United States each year.