William Larsen

Wind Power

Bob Caylor of the News Sentinel had a wonderful piece on wind power in today’s paper. I am so glad that this paper has now printed several articles on wind power and the positive aspects of this cheap, abundant, reliable, environmentally friendly and best of all renewable.

The photo shown in the paper depicting a wind mill farm appears to be of the very early style windmills of the late 60's and possibly the 70's. The new larger windmills with variable pitch blades turn at just 5 RPM. As you get higher in elevation, wind speed tends to be more constant and higher. A larger blade allows a slower rotational speed thus reducing the potential to kill birds. Research on this has shown more birds are killed hitting airplanes than windmills.

Bob wrote "it’s true that wind farms don’t bring an employment windfall to a community. And they don’t boost demand for marketable Hoosier resources, as is the case with traditional power plants and coal or ethanol plants and corn." Though this is true, cheaper energy will provide our manufacturing base to be more cost competitive. In addition, cheaper energy will reduce inflation, which again makes us more able to compete abroad. But most important, we should not be creating jobs just for the sake of jobs. Each job created should be needed and provide a needed product or service. Subsidizing ethanol plants artificially creates an unrealistic price and puts forth the perception that this is a good thing. When we can no longer afford the subsidy we will have millions of dollars in plants we have no use for and hundreds of people looking for other work.

posted by William Larsen @ 11:57 PM