WASHINGTON, With oil, gas and coal
depleting fast, US scientists say that available wind power is enough to fuel all of the world's energy
demands. The atmospheric wind turbines in high altitude areas generate even more
power than ground-and ocean-based units.
Near-surface winds could provide
more than 20 times global power demand and wind turbines on kites could
potentially capture 100 times the current global power demand.
Surface winds are those that can be
accessed by turbines supported by towers on land or rising out of the sea.
High-altitude winds are those that can be accessed by technology merging
turbines and kites, the journal Nature Climate Change reports.
New research from Carnegie Institute's
Ken Caldeira examines the limits of the amount of power that could be harvested
from winds, as well as the effects high-altitude wind power could have on the
climate as a whole, according to a Carnegie statement.
"Looking at the big picture, it
is more likely that economic, technological or political factors will determine
the growth of wind power around the world, rather than geophysical
limitations," Caldeira said.
Led by Kate Marvel of Lawrence
Livermore National Lab, who began this research at Carnegie, the team used
models to quantify the amount of power that could be generated from both
surface and atmospheric winds. The study looked only at the geophysical
limitations of these techniques, not technical or economic factors.
Using models, the team was able to
determine that more than 400 terrawatts (TW) of power could be extracted from
surface winds and more than 1,800 TW could be generated by winds extracted
throughout the atmosphere. Today, civilization uses about 18 TW of power.
As the number of wind turbines
increase, the amount of energy that is extracted increases. But at some point,
the winds would be slowed so much that adding more turbines will not generate
more electricity. This study focused on finding the point at which energy
extraction is highest.
At maximum levels of power
extraction, there would be substantial climate effects to wind harvesting. But
the study found that the climate effects of extracting wind energy at the level of current global demand would be small,
as long as the turbines were spread out and not clustered in just a few
regions.
