This article basically states that by 2024, wind power would replace coal and natural gas for about 20 to 30% of the electricity supplied on the eastern part of the United States. This shift in energy, however, will obviously be very costly, but they will have a dramatic effect on cutting carbon emissions.
The new study, conducted by EnerNex Corp., of Knoxville, Tenn., is the first major effort to compare those assertions. It found that in the “reference” case, with new windmills being built to satisfy state-by-state requirements for renewable energy, yearly electricity costs in the Eastern Interconnection would be about $125 billion (in today’s dollars) in 2024. Building enough windmills in the Midwest, with matching transmission lines, would raise that to about $140 billion, and building offshore would bring costs of about $150 billion.
I thought this article was interesting since we dicussed about scarce resources and ideas today, which this article is a good combination of the use of both of them.
1 comment:
This article actually reminds me of my environmental economics class. It is well known that about 95% of carbon is emitted, especially from the energy sector. An expanding use of wind power is a great idea, but will definitely be costly like the article said. It will ultimately become useful in the future but for now we have to spend more to attain that.
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