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Show Your Support for Wind Energy on Global Wind Day, June 15. Join AWEA's Visual Petition, Call for a National Renewable Electricity Standard,
Organize or Attend a #GWind09 Tweet-Up Near You.
Washington, D.C. - On Monday, June 15, the first-ever Global Wind Day will be celebrated in 25 countries. Organized by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), Global Wind Day promotes awareness of wind energy worldwide, inviting the public to celebrate wind power as a near-term solution to global climate change and a driver for economic growth in local communities.
"In the United States, Global Wind Day comes at a time when the nation is surging forward in wind and renewable energy development," said AWEA CEO Denise Bode,"but we risk losing this momentum and tens of thousands of jobs if Congress does not adopt a strong national renewable energy standard, or RES. America could lose ground to China and Europe where strong renewable energy policy commitments are driving investment in manufacturing and development. It's time for a national RES here in the U.S. We need to seize this historic opportunity to create jobs, build up our renewable energy industry, and fight climate change."
Wind energy supporters can join AWEA's call for an RES through a number of events and activities on Global Wind Day, including:
• Asking representatives in Congress to support a STRONG national renewable electricity standard. Right now in the U.S., Congress is voting on a national RES that could bring more wind and renewable energy to the electricity grid. But significant challenges threaten this critical policy and many members of Congress are still undecided about their votes. Supporters can ask their representatives in Congress to support a strong RES through www.powerofwind.com or www.globalwinddayusa.com.
• Submitting a photo or comment to AWEA's visual petition, Why Wind Matters to Me! AWEA is organizing a visual petition at www.globalwinddayusa.com. Wind energy supporters can submit a photo or a comment that shows how wind energy is making a difference today. These photos will be presented to members of Congress to highlight their constituency's support of wind power. Why Wind Matters to Me! photo categories include: My Wind Energy Job, I Love Wind Technology, Faces of Wind, My Wind Turbine, and Scenic.
• Attending or organizing a #GWind09 Tweet-Up near you: AWEA is hosting Global Wind Day Tweet-Ups (Twitter tag: #GWind09) in Washington, D.C. and New York City on June 15. For details, visit www.twitter.com/awea or host your own Tweet-Up in your home town!
Also on Global Wind Day, the Western Governors' Association will feature U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Jon Wellinghoff, and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a panel discussion about tapping the nation's vast renewable energy resources at its annual meeting in Park City, Utah. For more information, visit http://www.westgov.org/wga/meetings/am2009/index.htm.
At the Good Jobs Green Jobs conference this week, it was a bit hard being a Virginian listening to Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and Minnesota State Senator Ellen Anderson talk specifically about all the great clean energy initiatives happening in their respective states. But the light at the end of the tunnel is that hopefully Virginia will some day be so progressive, and at the same time, learn from these states' trials and tribulations.
In 2007, Minnesota went from not just a voluntary RPS to a mandatory one that is quite progressive. By 2025, 25% of their electrical generation must come from renewable energy resources. On their state's largest utility, XCel Energy, they went even further, imposing 30% by 2025 of which 25% had to come from wind power generation.
That is potentially a lot of wind turbines! And there are over 8,000 components to each turbine - fiberglass, steel rods, ball bearings, gear boxes, etc., etc. For every one megawatt of installed capacity, wind energy produces 22 direct and indirect jobs. Five jobs are added for installing turbines and 17 jobs per megawatt (MW) are added related to manufacturing. (Source)
But alas, the clever Iowa, while Minnesota was negotiating its RPS, has been fast garnering to its state a number of wind power production facilities. New facilities opening in 2007 were Acciona (turbines) in West Branch, IA (110 jobs) and Siemens (blades) in Ft. Madison, IA (250 jobs). New facilities announced in 2007 include TPI Composites (blades) in Newton, IA (500 jobs). New facilities in Minnesota? Zero. Where a number of Iowa produced turbines will end up given its RPS mandate? In Minnesota.
The big lesson Virginia can learn here is that we have to be good multi-taskers: work on that good progressive RPS while also working on the economic development end of things in hopes of bringing wind power manufacturers to Virginia. Just as Delegate Joe Bouchard noted in his interview with Lowell here, this could be a manufacturing boon to Hampton Roads in particular with our offshore wind development and the offshore production already in the pipeline in Atlantic coast states such as New Jersey and Delaware.
The U.S. and China are now locked in a race for the top of the global wind industry. Just yesterday, the AWEA announced that the U.S. has passed German to become #1 in the world with wind power installations. Meanwhile, China's total capacity has doubled for the 4th year in a row.
- The massive growth in the US wind market in 2008 increased the nation's total wind power generating capacity by 50%. The new wind projects completed in 2008 account for about 42% of the entire new power-producing capacity added in the US last year, and created 35,000 new jobs, for a total of 85,000 employed in the sector in the US.
- Global wind energy capacity grew by 28.8% last year, even higher than the average over the past decade, to reach total global installations of more than 120.8 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2008. Over 27,000 MW (27 GW) of new wind power generation capacity came online in 2008, 36% more than in 2007. The 120 GW of global wind capacity in place at the end of 2008 will produce 260 TWh and save 158 million tons of CO2 every year.
- Wind energy is now an important player in the world's energy markets. The global wind market for turbine installations in 2008 was worth about 36.5bn EUR or 47.5bn US$.
As Faithfull covered earlier, wind power has surged past coal power as a jobs creator. Here's a related map that shows Virginia is getting shut out of the new energy economy. Despite utility-scale potential in several parts of the commonwealth, we've left that wind power untapped to focus instead on blowing up mountains to get at the dirty coal underneath:
For any of us who care about the environment - and specifically the rapid development of clean, renewable energy sources - this is great news:
A plan to build a $1.2 billion, privately run wind farm off the Cape Cod shore cleared a major hurdle yesterday when the Interior Department deemed it environmentally safe.
The 800-page report by Interior's Minerals Management Service said the 24 square-mile wind farm in Nantucket Sound would pose little or no threat to wildlife and fish. Barring any further objections from lawmakers, a final "record of decision" for the project will be issued in 30 days.
An elated Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associates, the project's developer, said Massachusetts was "one major step closer to becoming home to America's first offshore wind farm and becoming a global leader in the production of offshore renewable energy."
Great news, but even when this project is finally built, it's only a tiny - albeit important - first step.
Check out this map for wind power potential in the United States, including right here in Virginia. Note that Virginia has significant wind possibilities in the Chesapeake Bay, on the Atlantic coast, and in the Shenandoah region. So, what are we waiting for? Well, for one thing, Virginia needs to enact a mandatory Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), as the vast majority of states (particularly in terms of population) have done. How about let's start with at least a 20% RPS by 2020. Even better, how about we do what California recently did, and impose a mandatory RPS of 33% by 2020? Is there any reason, aside from political pressure and a constant barrage of feel-good (but utterly absurd) propaganda by Dominion Power, not to do this? Right, I didn't think so...
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The U.S. and China are now locked in a race for the top of the global wind industry. Just yesterday, the AWEA announced that the U.S. has passed German to become #1 in the world with wind power installations. Meanwhile, China's total capacity has doubled for the 4th year in a row.
For any of us who care about the environment - and specifically the rapid development of clean, renewable energy sources - 
