New York City

Wind energy could play a major role in providing all the power needed for the entire state of New York by 2030, according to a new academic study.

New York’s power demand for all sectors in 17 years time could be met, in part, by 4,020 onshore 5-megawatt wind turbines and 12,770 offshore 5-MW machines, the study by researchers from Cornell, Stanford and the University of California-Davis found.

Harnessing power from water and sunlight would also be part of the alternative energy plan for New York, which has close to 20 million people and is the third most populated state in the US.

“Converting to wind, water and sunlight is feasible, will stabilize costs of energy and will produce jobs while reducing health and climate damage,” study co-author Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, was quoted as saying.

More than two-thirds of Americans want the US to place more emphasis on generating domestic energy using wind power, according to a new Gallup public opinion poll.

Published 27 March, the poll results noted that 71% of those surveyed said the nation should put more emphasis in the future on developing wind power. When broken down by political ideology, the poll results showed 83% of those who identified as Democrats favoured more wind power, while 59% of Republicans felt the same way.

“Far fewer want to emphasise the production of oil (46%) and the use of nuclear power (37%),” an accompanying Gallup press release said. “Least favoured is coal, with about one in three Americans wanting to prioritise its domestic production.”

“Republicans and Democrats disagree most on the priority that should be given to oil as a future energy source — with 71% of Republicans wanting more emphasis placed on it, compared with 29% among Democrats,” the press release said.

Wind turbine in Jiangsu Province, China

Hot on the heels of the news that Chinese wind power produced more electricity than nuclear last year, comes the announcement that China’s wind power production grew more than coal power production for the first time ever in 2012, according to statistics from the China Energy Council.

Thermal power using mostly coal increased by only about 0.3% in China last year, the statistics noted, an addition of roughly 12 terawatt hours (TWh) more electricity.

“In contrast, wind power production expanded by about 26 TWh,” according to a blog posted on the Energy Collective written recently about the statistics by Li Shuo, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

“This rapid expansion brings the total amount of wind power production in China to 100 TWh, surpassing China’s 98 TWh of nuclear power.”

Health warnings from anti-wind power activists about wind power are likely to be causing some people to think they are getting sick, a new study from an Australian academic shows.

Simon Chapman, one of the study’s contributing authors, said health complaints in Australia about so-called ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome’ began to appear after “scare-mongering groups began megaphoning their apocalyptic, scary messages to rural residents.”

The study, which was published last week, said that “conclusions in view of scientific consensus that the evidence for wind turbine noise and infrasound causing health problems is poor.”

It added that wind-power-related “complaints are consistent with psychogenic hypotheses that health problems arising are ‘communicated diseases’” spread by claims that turbines would make people sick.

So much wind energy is now being generated in the US that the emissions-free electricity-generating technology may seriously erode the nation’s nuclear power and coal sectors, the Bloomberg news agency reported Monday.

Headlined “nuclear industry withers in US as wind pummels prices,” the story interviewed utility experts talking about the state of the American energy sector after the nation’s wind power industry grew by about $25 billion last year.

The story noted that a significant part of that growth occurred as wind-related companies made sure they would qualify for the Production Tax Credit (PTC), the industry’s main tax incentive, which was due to expire at end of 2012. The PTC has since been extended.

“The surge added a record 13,124 megawatts of wind turbines to the nation’s power grid, up 28% from 2011,” the story said. “The new wind farms increased financial pressure on traditional generators such as Dominion Resources Inc. and Exelon Corp. in their operating regions. That’s because wind energy undercut power prices already driven to 10-year-lows by an abundance of natural gas.”