A little background information on wind energy
The Earth receives 180,000 terawatts of radiant energy from the Sun.[1] Of that, about 2% is converted into kinetic energy, in the form of the energy of motion of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and of that 2%, about 30% consists of wind energy in the lower 1000 meters of the atmosphere.[2] Total human energy use is 16 terawatts.[1] By my calculations (to use the time-honored expression), that means that in theory it would only take about 1.5% of the planet’s total wind energy to meet all of humanity’s energy needs. Practice of course always differs considerably from theory, but the basic favorability of this number is striking. Fortunately, there is peer-reviewed research that reaches a similar conclusion, using highly sophisticated models.[3]
My wind power supplier: Arcadia Power
Way back in October of 2015, I switched my electric energy supplier from PG&E to Arcadia Power, a supplier of 100% wind energy. The process was simple. First I created an online account with my utility, which happens to be PG&E. Next, I did the same with Arcadia Power. Finally, I setup automatic payments using a credit card, and gave Arcadia Power my PG&E login credentials. Arcadia Power has handled everything from that point. They pay my monthly PG&E bill, for which I reimburse them, along with a $5 wind-energy charge. They use the REC (Renewable Energy Certificate) model, and are EPA certified; a key point of this system is that the customer owns the environmental benefits, which cannot, for example, be resold by the power provider to another business looking to offset its own CO2 emissions.[4] (Note: Although I came to Arcadia Power via a different path, there is/was a relationship between Daily Kos and Arcadia Power, a relationship concerning which some Kossacks have expressed doubt; however, I don’t know what that relationship currently is. Possibly it has been replaced by, or subsumed under, the relationship with CleanChoice Energy.)
2018 Impact Report from Arcadia Power
Today I received the 2018 Impact Report from Arcadia Power via email. It communicates to customers the favorable environmental impact of their collective choice in several creative ways:
You helped directly contribute to this [362,283,853 kWh of wind energy] in 2018 by supporting the production of…
- Enough wind energy to power the White House for 400 years
- Saving the weight of 570,000 polar bears in CO2
- Which is like nearly doubling the size of Grand Mesa National Forest for a year
One more bullet point
We have all seen sidewalks lifted and cracked by tree roots, but we have never observed it actually happening. That is because while trees are tremendously powerful, they act slowly (on a human timescale). Similarly, human-caused climate change is slow violence (again on a human, but not geological, timescale), but extreme violence, nonetheless. One yardstick for extreme violence is the nuclear bomb, like the 100-kiloton device tested by North Korea in September of 2017. To bring the point of slow but extreme violence home, I would add one more bullet point to the above list (based on a calculation by yours truly, omitted here so as not to bore the readers):
- The greenhouse-effect energy equivalent of not exploding 18 100-kiloton nuclear bombs during the year
Sources
- Andrew Dessler, Introduction to Modern Climate Change (2nd Edition), Cambridge University Press, October 2015, page 53
- Renewable Energy Engineering (Kindle eBook), Knowledge flow, chapter 2
- Andrew Myers, “Wind could meet world’s total power demand - and then some - by 2030”, Stanford University, 10 Sep 2012 https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/wind-could-meet-world-s-total-power-demand-and-then-some-2030
- Ask Umbra [Umbra Fisk], “Should I source my home power from renewable energy?”, Grist, 11 May 2015 http://grist.org/climate-energy/are-renewable-energy-certificates-a-scam/