Let’s wrap up our series on DERs with the holy wind. It’s a quick one. Sit back, relax, and let this one blow your mind.
What Is Wind Energy?
Most of us immediately think of wind turbines. They are always part of futuristic images when people and machines envision a better world reliant on clean and renewable energy. You saw one at the top of this post.
Wind turbines creating electricity work like reversed fans. Instead of using electricity to create wind on a hot summer day in your apartment without AC, it takes naturally occurring wind to spin the rotors to create electricity. Electricity is what we need a lot of right now and will need an even greater amount going forward. In short, wind turbines harness the kinetic energy from the wind and turn that into electricity.
Energy harnessed from wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S. right now. It supplies more than 10% of the total electricity generated.
Wind energy is used in a variety of applications and activities outside of electricity generation. Think of sailing, kite-surfing, pumping water from A to B, or windmills back in the day that were used to grind wheat. Wind certainly has enormous potential. Humanity discovered this more than 5000 years ago.
How Wind Generates Electricity
The main application of wind energy is electricity generation.
The mechanical power created through the rotor blades turning can be turned into electricity using a conventional generator. The rotor blades work similar to airplane wings or helicopter rotors. It goes something like this:
The wind hits the rotor blade
Wind hitting the rotor blade decreases air pressure on one side of the blade
Differing air pressure creates lift and drag
Lift force is stronger thus spinning the rotor blades
The rotational force turns a generator
Generator creates electricity
Same principle as in coal-fired power plants just much much cleaner.
How Has Wind Energy Done in the Past?
Last year, the wind energy industry installed a record new capacity of 117 gigawatts (GW)! That’s a 50% increase compared to 2022. The cumulative amount of wind energy globally is 1 terawatt (TW). That means last year alone, we added roughly 12% of that.
Unfortunately, the newly added capacity is geographically very concentrated. You guessed it, China is top of the ranks, followed by the U.S., Brazil, Germany, and India. China alone installed 65% of the newly added capacity. Similar to the solar supply chain, China also holds 64% of the total value created along the wind supply chain. That includes mining, transport, and installation.
That’s good progress in 2023, but we need to triple that annual new capacity by 2030 to stay on track for net zero by 2050. The biggest blocker for that is policy. The current policy landscape in most countries does not allow for rapid installment of new wind capacities. First and foremost, we need to remove all unnecessary points of legislative obstructions that prevent faster deployment. But permission is not the only blocker holding us back. Grid capacity and land availability also pose great challenges for a faster build-out of wind energy.
Offshore wind is getting more and more popular. Last October, the Biden administration approved the largest offshore wind farm in the U.S. which supposedly powers 900.000 homes with clean energy. More of that, please.
It took us 40 years to get to 1TW, now we have 7 to add to get to 2 TW to stay on track for 1.5 degrees. Let’s get to it!
What About Other Wind Energy Applications?
A hot topic right now is alternative boat engines. Explorers, sailors, and pirates figured that one out a while ago. Using wind to propel ships across the oceans is an effective way of transportation. There are several different approaches, ranging from gigantic kites pulling the ships to modern sails. The opportunity is huge!
80% of all global goods are shipped via the sea. And as we all know, all of these ships run on dirty combustion engines. Overall, shipping accounts for 3% of all global emissions. If we could get rid of those, that would be a big step in the right direction. I hypothesize that as our population grows and globalization continues to intensify, we will be shipping more not less goods in the years to come. And I’m skeptical about finding a cleaner mode of transportation for those goods in the short term. Net-zero flying is much further away than shipping.
One of the wind-assisted shipping technologies currently being tested was inspired by high-performing sails that were used by competitive sailors in the America's Cup. They used so-called “wind wings” that help save 7 tonnes of fuel on a good day. That is 20 tones of CO2e that’s not released into the atmosphere. Annualized, that’s around 5000 tonnes of CO2e per large cargo ship. But here’s the catch. This is only reducing the ship's emissions by 15-20%. Good start, but there is way more we need to do to get to zero-emissions shipping.
I hope you learned something in reading today’s post! Let that wind of change carry you away and spread the word about the mighty power of the coolest sun byproduct out there. Let me know what you liked about today’s post in the comment section below.
Stay electric,
Basti