I’ve been flapping my arms about offshore wind potential and for good reason.
All eyes should be on a company called Deepwater Wind. Their website is here:
Here’s a piece from yesterday that HuffPo did on Deepwater Wind:
Pioneering Wind Farm Hopes To Clean Up The ‘Deepwater’ Name
From the piece:
Wind resource potential is typically given in gigawatts (GW), and 1 GW of wind power will supply between 225,000 to 300,000 average U.S. homes with power annually.
According to a 2012 report from NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory), they’re right here in CO, NREL estimates a gross wind power resource of 4,223 GW off the coast of the United States. That is roughly four times the generating capacity of the current U.S. electric grid. Even if only a fraction of that potential is developed, clearly there is enough offshore wind resource to power a substantial portion of our nation’s energy needs.
That’s right, folks. Offshore wind can supply 4 times the generating capacity of today’s U.S. electrical grid. Now tell me again why we’re investing one penny in fossil fuels? It’s a rhetorical question. The reason why is that the fossil fuel guys know their model is so yesteryear. So they’re buying off politicians, doing everything they can to keep their business going. All while continuing to wreak havoc on Mother Earth. All “in the name of destiny and in the name of God” to quote Don Henley.
Bastards.
My friend Arn Menconi is in Standing Rock today to join the protest. Good on ya, Arn. As soon as he sends me some pics I’ll post them along with two videos of him taking action. Arn is doing great work. But what Arn and everyone else needs to do is connect their protest to a solution. They need to point people to renewable energy solutions that are providing power today, to great companies like Deepwater Wind.
And they need to recognize this.
And, by using offshore platform technology proven in the oil and gas industry, we’re able to build wind farms in deep ocean waters many miles offshore, where they are barely visible from shore.
That’s right. Deepwater is using offshore platform’s pioneered by oil and gas companies.
I’m not suggesting that we unplug the oil and gas industry. I hope others in this battle aren’t either. To do so is naive. What I think I’ve always said, is that it doesn’t make any sense now to focus investment in fossil fuels. Instead, the lion’s share of our energy investment should be in alternative energy such as wind, sun, and TWR (Traveling Wave Reactor).
Leave a Reply