Study: Wind Power Is East Coast’s Best Energy Option

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By Gabriel Perna: Subscribe to Gabriel's RSS feed

September 30, 2010 12:02 PM EDT

Wind farms could completely replace fossil fuel as the main energy source in at least six states, according to a study by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

The group, called Oceana, compared the costs of offshore wind energy with oil and gas. The study focused primarily on the east coast and concluded an investment into wind energy would create jobs, reduce pollution and in many cases create just as much energy as fossil fuels.

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All told, Oceana concluded wind energy could produce 30 percent more electricity than economically recoverable offshore oil and gas on the east coast. The group said the investment it proposed would supply nearly half of the current electricity generation of East Coast states. Oceana used conservative estimates of potential ocean spaces for wind farms.

"We think if the U.S. is trying to develop an energy policy that's sensible to clean energy, the transition to wind energy would make a lot more sense than oil and gas," said.

"We didn't want to overstate it," said Jacqueline Savitz, Oceana's senior campaign director and one of the report's co-authors. "We only considered areas that are three to 24 nautical miles out, even though people think you can do it farther. We only considered areas that are 30 meters deep, again even though people think you can develop it deeper. We looked at the wind resources in those areas based on the national renewable energy lab and only used winds that were class four or higher. We didn't develop anywhere with military, environmental or shipping lane restraint, which meants 67 percent of the area was out of consideration with these standards."

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Despite this extensive exclusivity and the researchers "cheating" wind, it still generated a total of 127 gigawatts of energy. This amount is roughly equal to European projections for offshore wind-generated energy by 2030 on that continent. "Even with the cheated wind, it's still better than oil and gas," Savitz said.

In six states: Massachusetts, North Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia and South Carolina, Oceana said wind energy could completely replace fossil fuels. In the first three states, it would completely reduce the need for any fossil fuels. In the latter three, it at least would replace the energy demand. In some states, energy is exported to other states.

Naturally, there are a couple of things holding back wind energy says Savitz. For one, the renewable energy has seen limited investment.

"As a result of the financial downturn, you haven't seen as much investment into wind energy in the past few years. However, there has been some work to alleviate that. The stimulus had a investment tax credit which allows developers and manufacturers of clean energy technology to get a grant back from what they invested," Savitz said.

The other limitation is supply chain. Because most of the offshore wind energy parts are made overseas, specifically in Germany and China, getting them to the U.S. would be a problem. There are currently no offshore wind farms in the U.S., and only one, the Cape Wind Energy project in Cape Cod, Mass., has even made it to the definitive planning stages.

Savitz predicts once the first wind energy plant is created and then the second, it will have a snowballing effect. "As we build wind farms, it'll get easier," she said.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times, the business news leader