Hello,
How long will oil last? How long will natural gas last? How long will coal last? And how long until we poison our environment with radioactive waste and too much carbon dioxide?
Germany has much less sunshine than almost anywhere in the USA -- it is equivalent to Washington state, which has the least sunshine anywhere in the lower 48 states. Wind power is also quite abundant over a very large area of the central western part of the country, and off shore, the wind is ideal for constant power generation. New Jersey will be getting a wind farm off shore:
New Jersey to Get Huge Coastal Wind Farm | EcoRenovator.org
Also, in Buzzards Bay in Rhode Island, and eventually Cape Wind will get it's 135 wind turbines. Hull Massachusetts has two turbines already, and is getting four more. Maine has a (35?) wind turbine farm (at least). In "
Plan B 3.0", the author proposes building 1.5 million 2MW turbines and installing them in the windy parts of the USA -- this will produce a large majority of the electricity we need; and just three states: Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota could produce enough for ALL of our electricity needs!
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization; Chapter 12: Turning to Renewable Energy; Harnessing the Wind
Quote:
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One of wind’s attractions is that it requires so little land compared with other sources of renewable energy. For example, a corn farmer in northern Iowa can put a wind turbine on a quarter-acre of land that can produce $300,000 worth of electricity per year. This same quarter-acre would produce 40 bushels of corn that in turn could produce 120 gallons of ethanol worth $300. Since the turbines occupy less than 1 percent of the land in a wind farm, this technology lets farmers harvest both energy and crops from the same land. Thousands of ranchers in the wind-rich Great Plains will soon be earning more from wind royalties than from cattle sales.
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And again, there are numerous other renewable sources of energy that can be used to balance out the shortcomings:
ocean power, biomass, biodiesel, geothermal, and recent improvements in generating hydrogen from water (nearly 100% efficiency), and heat storage underground, compressed air storage underground, raised water hydro -- the list goes on... Not to mention the (good) possibility that we can engineer an
oil-pooping bacteria.