Editorial: The Energy Mosaic Of The Future

At a public meeting at Atlantic City on April 6, Interior Secretary Kan Salazar said that wind power form turbines off the East Coast, if fully developed, could replace most, if not all, coal-fired power plants in the U.S. “[Wind power] is not technology that is pie-in-the-sky. It is here and now.”

Well, yes and no. The technological hurdles in generating the amount of extra power required have been mostly overcome, or soon will be.

The challenges lie in distribution. Getting the wind energy to where people live and consume power is the problem. Costs rise with every mile that the extra current is transported along a grid not designed to efficiently handle such surges. Distributing wind, or any other kind of unpredictable “surge” energy, effectively will require rebuilding the electricity grid—an enormous and costly proposition.

In August 2008, the New York Times quoted a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who compared today’s grid to a network of country roads, when what is needed is “an interstate transmission superhighway system.” A wind energy executive in the same story said, “The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers.” America’s grid is “balkanized,” said the Times, with 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. States supervise grids, not the federal government.

While wind is running into roadblocks, parts of Europe are turning more to coal. Germany has exempted several coal plants from its cap-and-trade energy scheme, and Italy plans to increase its reliance on coal from 14 percent to 33 percent of its energy (WJ, December 29, 2008).

Distribution of wind energy is the topic of a major conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to be held in late April. Presenters will talk on “challenges of meeting the 2020 goals” and “the critical path for grid infrastructure.” Scotland has set a goal of having wind provide 50 percent of its energy by 2020, and it’s clear the country’s grid is not up to the task.

The coal industry, like steel and other industries, has been renewing itself, and not just in response to pollution controls. Its steep employment declines have been due at least as much to automation and modernization as to competition from other energy sources. Responding to Salazar’s remarks, the American Coal Council pointed out that half the nation’s energy still comes from coal.

Wind may overcome its distribution problems eventually. Several regions of the country now claim that wind is cost-competitive with coal. But the truth seems to be that wind and clean coal, along with other sources, will make up an energy mosaic in the future. With at least 200 years of proven reserves, coal cannot be counted out of any future energy scenario. Coal barging companies need not worry too much about running out of cargo anytime soon.

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