The American Wind Energy Association's call for more investment in electric transmission, noted in Len Anderson's posting, won a major endorsement today from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), whose mission is to ensure the reliability of the bulk power system in North America.

In its 2008 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, NERC highlights both the extraordinary growth of wind power and the challenges posed by integrating such an intermittent resource into the nation's power system.

Over the next 10 years, NERC predicts, the total capacity of wind farms in North America will soar 750 percent--but this clean, renewable power will only do us good if high-capacity transmission lines connect big cities and other load centers with turbines in West Texas, the Dakotas, and other remote areas.

New transmission is also needed to connect reserve power sources, which can be cranked up when the wind dies down.

Unfortunately, owing to local opposition and environmental concerns, transmission permitting, siting and construction typically takes 7 to 10 years, much longer than for new generation, according to the report.

"We need more transmission resources to maintain reliability and achieve environmental goals," commented Rick Sergel, president and CEO of NERC. "Transmission lines are the critical link between new generation and customers, yet we continue to see transmission development lag behind generation additions. Faster siting, permitting, and construction of transmission resources will be vital to keeping the lights on in the coming years."

The American Wind Energy Association yesterday reported that the U.S. wind industry is on track to install a record 7,500 megawatts of wind power this year, enough electricity to power about 2.2 million homes, but the industry group warned that 2009 will not be as strong.

Some highlights from AWEA's third quarter report:

• Texas added 693 MW in the third quarter -- the most of any state -- to boost its total capacity to 6 gigawatts, which pushes the state to the "global leaders" status behind only Germany, India and Spain.
• West Virginia showed the fastest wind power capacity growth in the third quarter, more than tripling existing capacity with a 164-MW project and another 100-MW facility expected to come on line by the end of the year.
• Utah added its first multi-turbine wind project, and in the Dakotas, wind turbine maker Acciona Energy brought its first U.S. turbines project on line straddling the North Dakota/South Dakota border.

Next year, however, won't be as productive, AWEA said. Because of the late one-year extension of the federal wind production tax credit in the bailout bill and the evolving financial crisis, new construction starts of wind farms will likely slow in 2009.

AWEA next year will push the new administration and Congress for a long-term extension of the wind production tax credit, a federal renewable energy standard, national climate-change legislation, and spending for new transmission capacity.

You can read the complete report at AWEA's Web site.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Tesla To Delay New Car: The credit crisis has forced electric car developer Tesla Motors to delay its launch of a five-passenger battery-powered sedan and lay off a "modest" number of its 250 employees to save cash. Tesla, which sells the spiffy Roadster, faces stiff competition for electric cars with GM, Nissan, China's BYD Co. and possibly Chrysler, Reuters says.
• Pedaling For Progress In The Bailout: EnviroWonk reports the $700 billion bailout bill has a provision to allow bicycle commuters to get a $20 monthly credit for maintenance, repairs and purchasing, thanks to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who bikes daily to his Washington office.
• What's Fresh Is Not The Only Factor: Environmentally conscious sushi lovers now can get a lot of information about sustainability of the seafood from three new pocket guides, says the New York Times' Dining & Wine page. The guides -- from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Environmental Defense Fund and the Blue Ocean Institute -- agree on which fish are sustainable but present the information in different ways.
• Another Reason For Bats To Like Halloween: The Reuters Environment blog notes that bats may get some help from the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, an unlikely group of conservationists, wind power companies and the federal government. They want to know if stopping spinning turbines during low wind conditions will reduce bat deaths at wind farms.

California was a leader in the early days of wind power, with the development of huge wind farms at Altamont Pass and Tehachapi Pass. Now a San Francisco-based startup, Principle Power, is racing to become the first U.S. firm to develop a wind farm offshore.

Principle Power, which also has an office in Seattle, recently signed an agreement with an Oregon agency to begin work on a phased development of a 150 megawatt floating wind power plant off the coast of Tillamook County.

Unlike existing offshore wind farms in Europe, which mount turbines on large steel tubes embedded tens of meters into the seabed, Principle Power plans to use unique floating platforms designed by Berkeley-based Marine Innovation & Technology. The project as currently envisioned would consist of 30 floating turbines, each with 5 MW of capacity.

The attraction of putting wind farms offshore may not be immediately obvious, given the harsh conditions and complicated logistics. But winds often blow harder and more consistently offshore than on land. Site acquisition costs are typically much lower offshore. And offshore wind farms may actually be closer to load centers than their terrestrial counterparts.

Principle Power has lots of competition. A recent report by the Department of Energy says the eight or nine proposals currently under development in state or federal waters total 1,500 MW.

Perhaps the best known is Cape Wind, whose plans to site turbines off of Nantucket have been stalled by esthetic objections.

Garden State Offshore Energy this month was awarded rights by New Jersey regulators to build a $1 billion wind farm off the southern coast of that state. Other projects are afoot off the coasts of Delaware and Rhode Island.

The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service is reportedly putting the finishing touches on a rule to govern leasing of offshore lands for alternative-energy production, which will be a boon to developers.

Principle Power has a long way to go to raise money and prove that it can deliver. As the Department of Energy report noted, "the commercialization of offshore energy faces many technical, regulatory, socioeconomic, and political barriers." But since when did that ever stop dedicated entrepreneurs from trying?

The long struggle to extend federal tax credits for the renewable energy industry resembled a season of The Perils of Pauline: By one count it took nine votes in Congress before the long-awaited investment and production credits finally passed last week as part of the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The solar industry won an eight-year extension of a 30 percent credit for residential and commercial solar power installations. One industry-sponsored study predicts that this credit will create more than 400,000 new jobs in the solar power industry.

The bill also extends production tax credits to the biomass, geothermal and marine (wave and tidal) energy industries for two years, and to the wind power industry for one year.

By spurring the development of renewable energy, the credits promise a win for the environment, a win for the increasingly depressed U. S. economy, a win for emerging industries, and a win for PG&E and other utilities that have contracted with renewable power companies to provide cleaner energy for their customers.

Since the start of 2007, PG&E has contracted for more than 2,600 megawatts of new renewable power. Many of those projects are still under development and count on tax credits as a condition of financing and development. Failure to renew the credits could have put them, and hundreds like them around the country, in jeopardy.

PG&E worked hard to help Congress understand the need to act, in partnership with organizations such as Alliance to Save Energy, Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Clean Energy Now, Edison Electric Institute, and Solar Energy Industry Association. PG&E chief executive Peter Darbee stressed the critical need for tax incentives in an address to the 2008 United Nations Investor Summit on Climate Risk and in a lead opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle, among other places.

Extension of the tax credits removes the single biggest hurdle to the development of renewable power, but not the only one. As the California Public Utilities Commission (and many other parties) have noted, continuing challenges include the cost and delay in building transmission to serve new renewable power plants, developer inexperience, financing uncertainty, and site control and permitting.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Sustainable is one of the top categories featured on NEXT100, so Andy Revkin's post on sustainable cities on his DotEarth blog seemed right for this week's roundup. Portland, Oregon, again topped a list of 50 U.S. cities compiled by SustainLane.com, a publisher that reviews things that are supposed to be good for you. The Rose City has topped the list for social and environmental sustainability since it began in 2005. San Francisco was No. 2 for the second consecutive year.
• Another piece on sustainability:environmental and aid groups are urging wealthy industrial countries to pay poorer nations to preserve their forests and jungles. Tropical forests absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Deforestration releases large volumes of CO2, threatening to cancel out emission reductions elsewhere. 
• A U.N. report this week -- "Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World" -- says more than 20 million jobs could be created as countries move toward new energy sectors, including wind, solar and geothermal power. Some 2.3 million people are now working in alternative energy jobs, with half in biofuels, according to the report.
• Shifting gears to plug-in vehicles, Montreal-based Dorel Industries is introducing a lithium-ion-battery-powered "e-bike" -- the Schwinn Tailwind. It claims to recharge the battery in only 30 minutes compared with four hours or more for a standard e-bike. The price: $3,200 (U.S.). 

Human beings are seemingly hard wired for one-upmanship, so it's no surprise that the renewable energy industry, for all its polite social consciousness, has its share of healthy competition.

The latest example comes courtesy of Fortune magazine, which reports that Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California plans to upscale its previously announced plans to sell the world's largest wind turbine to The Crown Estate, which controls the Queen of England's holdings. The proposed offshore turbine is gargantuan enough to scare even a T-Rex: 574 feet high, with blades stretching the length of two soccer fields. Its peak production capacity will be 10 megawatts, enough to power several thousand homes (when the wind is blowing).

The current wind turbine record holder, by some accounts, is the Enercon E-126, a 6-7 megawatt German behemoth with a rotor diameter of 413 feet. The Führlander wind turbine, also made in Germany, produces "only" about 2.5 MW, but stands an incredible 672 feet tall, almost half the height of the Empire State Building.

Turbine makers aren't producing such monsters just to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. If you remember your high school math, the area of a circle--the area swept by the turbine's rotors--increases with the square of the radius. There are also economies of scale in terms of the costs of land acquisition, construction, electronics, and grid connections.

Of course, there are downsides, too - starting with the fact that one of these machines might be a bit too big for your backyard!

This year's H. Ross Perot award for "eccentric Texas billionaire who most captures the public's imagination" undoubtedly goes to T. Boone Pickens, the oil wildcatter and corporate raider who has become a born-again proponent of wind power.

His multibillion dollar initiative to build the world's largest wind farm in West Texas, and his "Pickens Plan" to wean the country off foreign oil, have spawned media headlines, crowds of admirers, and copycat investors aplenty.

While much of the reaction has been admiring, contrarian author Matthew Quirk, in the October issue of Atlantic Monthly, takes issue with all the hype in a story titled,  "Blowback: Is Wind the New Ethanol?"

Quirk spotlights two big problems with wind power. The first is the need to build billions of dollars worth of high-voltage transmission lines to connect new wind farms, often located in remote areas, with cities that need power. This need is particularly pressing given the stupendous growth of the wind industry, which reportedly doubled its installed capacity in the United States in just the last two years to more than 20,000 MW:

"Accommodating wind power on the scale foreseen nationally may require 12,000 to 19,000 miles of new high-power lines crisscrossing the country (by way of comparison, the interstate highway system runs 46,837 miles), plunging large parts of America into NIMBY hell."

The second problem is that no one can control when the wind blows. As every sailor knows, winds have a way of disappearing just when you are farthest from shore. The same goes with wind power: it often dies down on hot summer afternoons, just when demand for air conditioning peaks.

Just as annoying, wind power can surge late at night, forcing transmission grid operators and utilities to "spill" unused power in order to avoid overloading the system.

Quirk concludes that "it's hard to ignore the parallels to the recent ethanol boom, which was also fueled by mandates and subsidies, and which is now viewed almost universally as a disaster." A "turbine-building frenzy" could lead to higher energy prices, unreliable operations, and ultimately a wind-power bust, he warns.

But casual readers may not realize that his caveats about wind power have been discussed and analyzed for years. For example, the California Independent System Operator last year reported favorably on the feasibility of integrating intermittent renewable power into the state's electric system. And this July, the Department of Energy released a report supporting the ambitious vision of "20% Wind Energy by 2030."

"Transmission and power variability are real concerns but not showstoppers by any means," says Michael Goggin, electric industry analyst at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in Washington, D.C. "We can overcome those concerns through better policies and operational procedures. There will be some costs involved but they aren't insurmountable."

The cost of power transmission, for example, is actually a relatively small fraction of customers' bills. Finding politically acceptable routes for high-voltage lines is admittedly no easy task, but this challenge applies to most kinds of power generation, not just wind.

Utilities can deal with power variability by acquiring backup gas-fired generation, for use when the wind stops blowing. But here again, wind doesn't represent a unique problem. Utilities must have power reserves on hand to meet unpredictable loads or to deal with a failure at a conventional generation plant.

Utilities can also store excess wind energy at night for use during peak-load periods in the day. PG&E operates a suitable storage system that uses off-peak power to pump water into the Helms hydropower reservoir, and the utility has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build two more similar facilities.

Hal La Flash, director of emerging clean technology policy at Pacific Gas and Electric, says wind power is not only clean but one of the most affordable kinds of renewable energy, though costs are rising along with other forms of power.

PG&E has signed two wind power contracts this year, bringing the utility's total amount of renewable wind energy under contract or delivered to more than 1,250 MW.

But La Flash adds, "Nothing is perfect. That's why we have a diverse renewables portfolio of wind, geothermal, biomass and solar. We don't hype any one kind of power. Everything should be done in a balanced way."

The U.S. is now the world leader in wind electricity generation with installed capacity of more than 20,000 megawatts, enough power to serve 5.3 million American homes, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today. The new capacity doubles the 10,000-MW mark reached in 2006.

U.S. capacity of 20,152 MW trails Germany's installed capacity of about 23,000 MW, but AWEA says the U.S. produces more electricity because of stronger winds. AWEA expects more than 7,500 MW of new wind capacity to be added in 2008, expanding the nation's wind power fleet by 45 percent and boosting total capacity to some 24,300 MW.

"Wind energy installations are well ahead of the curve for contributing 20 percent of the U.S. electric power supply by 2030," said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. But the likely expiration of the federal renewable production tax credit "threatens this spectacular progress," he said. The PTC is currently set to expire at the end of this year.

Swisher and other wind industry leaders hailed the 20,000 MW milestone in Minneapolis,  where the Republican National Convention is underway. Xcel Energy, which is  headquartered in Minneapolis, is the host utility for both the Republican convention and the Democratic National Convention held last week in Denver. Xcel is providing wind power from its system to power both events.

AWEA noted that although 20,000 MW is an important milestone, wind power provides just more than 1.5 percent of the nation's electricity, far below the potential identified by energy experts. The 20,000-plus MW can generate as much power as 28.7 million tons of coal or 90 million barrel of oil and displace 34 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to taking 5.8 million vehicles off the road.

Rock 'n' roll legend Janis Joplin launched many outdoor concerts in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in the late '60s but her spirit may have felt a little lost this weekend at the three-day, 65-bands Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in GGP. Eco-Lands environmental exhibits? Solar and wind-powered cell phone charging? Carbon footprint calculator? Help! What gives?

Festivals are going green. Ditto for political conventions. The Democratic convention opening this morning in Denver is coloring itself green. The party aims to recycle or compost at least 85 percent of the convention waste and leave town with a carbon-neutral footprint. Republicans won't be outdone at their party next week. The GOP "is committed to making this year's nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul the 'greenest' in party history." Eco-awareness is spreading.

Joel Selvin, senior pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted the movement in his review today of the Outside Lands Festival:

"The technology exhibits proved surprisingly popular and the crowd easily adopted the three-way recycle/compost/landfill refuse collections that should now be standard for public events. For the young crowd that was the event's target audience, this kind of techno-eco-consciousness helped strengthen the subtext." Festival producers said 150,000 people attended over the weekend.

Corporate sponsors included AT&T, Visa, Dell and PG&E, and non-profit organizations set up tents to provide information on issues ranging from water conservation to voter registration to environmental education.

PG&E provided a range of energy technologies, services and information for the festival, among them the Outside Lands Solar Stage in partnership with Sustainable Waves, the Pop Up Cafe made entirely of materials reclaimed from the San Francisco dump, Smart Energy information, Carbon Footprint Calculators and the utility's ClimateSmart program.