Wind could meet world power demand by 2013, say Stanford researchers Mercopress September 12th 2012
More Pie in the Sky from Stanford. It seems the headline went a little astray and the actual date in the paper is 2030. This “research” was paid for by the US taxpayer, via The National Science Foundation, EPA and NASA
“Adapting a sophisticated climate model, researchers show that there is plenty of wind available to supply half to several times the world’s total energy needs within the next two decades. If the world is to shift to clean energy, electricity generated by the wind will play a major role, and there is more than enough wind for that, according to new research from Stanford and the University of Delaware.
Researchers at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and the University of Delaware developed the most sophisticated weather model available to show that not only is there plenty of wind over land and near to shore to provide half the world’s power, but there is enough to exceed the total demand by several times, even after accounting for reductions in wind speed caused by turbines.
The saturation potential, they say, is more than 250 terawatts if we could place an army of 100-meter-tall wind turbines across the entire land and water of planet Earth.
Archer and Jacobson showed that 4 million turbines, each operating at a height of 100 meters and producing 5 megawatts, could supply as much as 7.5 terawatts of power – well more than half the world’s all-purpose power demand – without significant negative affect on the climate.
“To get there, however, we have a long way to go. Today, we have installed a little over 1 percent of the wind power needed,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson and Archer would site half of the 4 million turbines over water. The remaining 2 million would require a little more than one-half of 1 percent of the Earth’s land surface – about half the area of the state of Alaska.
Rather than put all the turbines in a single location, Archer and Jacobson say it is best and most efficient to spread out wind farms in high-wind sites across the globe – the Gobi Desert, the American plains and the Sahara, for example.”
“Their model assumed wind turbines could be installed anywhere and everywhere, without regard to societal, environmental, climatic or economic considerations.”