Blowin’ In The Wind
Green Careers & Recovery
This paper was largely developed from talks given during Earth Week 2009 at Green Career Events at San Diego State University, at the University of California at San Diego, and at San Diego Loves Green; my thanks to all for these opportunities to hone my thoughts in your presence and to those who offered personal insights and encouragement.
Recovery with Renewables
In late March, President Obama announced the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate saying, “We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc or we can create jobs preventing its worse effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America.”
We now have an opportunity in America to turn the adverse tides of climate, energy, national security, and the troubled economy by turning our attention to the opportunities implicit in those problems. Americans use nearly twice as much energy per capita than Europeans. We’ve entered an era where we fight wars for the tacit lure of oil. We allow our carbon-centric energy companies to promulgate falsehoods in order to protect their record profits, while they simultaneously reap the subsidies borne of slippery lobbyists who glide through Congress unimpeded by truth, science, or regard for their own future - much less the future of their children.
America’s energy appetite and the destabilizing political ills borne of the energy power nexus call for a sustainable resource that does not create more greenhouse gases, pollution, or waste for future generations. In order to ensure our prosperity deep into the millennium, we must prepare now to use sustainable forms of energy. In order to restore, maintain, and then secure America’s leadership position in the emerging world order, we must lead the charge in all areas of renewable energy; industrial scale wind, solar (both industrial and ubiquitous distributed rooftop generation), geothermal, tide, biomass, and biofuels.
Wind is an Answer
The answer to our near-term energy challenges could well be, blowin’ in the wind. Of all the renewables, wind power is considered the most viable, mature, scalable, and ready-to-go alternative source of power. Wind is both predictable and clean. Substantial capacity can be built up quickly, offering energy independence almost immediately to the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies.
According to the Department of Energy (DOE) and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), approximately 6% of the continental US is prime territory for wind generated electricity. If these wind-rich areas were fully utilized, we could generate between one-and-half-to-double the total amount of electricity now generated from all sources in the U.S.
An issue often favored by naysayers, is the supposed issue of wind ‘intermittency.’ Yet there are many areas where it is perpetually windy. (One thinks of Congress!) Still there are solutions for wind intermittency. We have viable energy storage schemes, such as compressed underground air, kinetic water schemes, and batteries - all of which hold promise, with the right fit determined for each unique location. Other ideas include the use of electric cars and plug-in hybrids, which would usually be plugged in at night, as a fleet of mobile night-time energy sinks. Another potential energy holding tank, or place to divert excess wind energy, could be the development of wind driven facilities for the production of hydrogen fuel.
A major plus for wind is that it is relatively inexpensive. Currently, the price of wind generation is about 4 cents per kW, which compares to 3.5-4 cents per kW from coal. But since the price of coal fired electricity doesn’t include the externalized costs to respiratory health, or the toxic pollution of the environment with mercury and soot, or climate-changing carbon, wind is not only financially competitive, but it’s a better deal on all points. Plus, there are moral, environmental, and aesthetic issues associated with mountain top removal and other extractive methods, as well as massive government subsidies extracted from taxpayers for fantasy research into the neverland of clean coal.
In as much as we are all concerned about jobs and the economy, how does wind energy look as an employment sector? Wind energy is more productive for the economy in creating jobs, and at much a lower total cost. From an investment perspective, a dollar invested in wind will generate three times as many jobs as that same dollar invested in coal.
Wind has the potential to provide a substantial portion of our energy needs with clean, inexpensive electrons that won’t burden future generations with our mistakes. Both the Department of Energy (DOE) and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) have researched and promulgated the idea that the U.S. has the capacity and therefore should derive 20% of its electricity from wind by the year 2020. This insight is reinforced by the National RES (Renewable Energy Standard) which will require all utilities to obtain 25% of their electricity from renewables by 2025. Consequently, continued growth of the wind power sector is a crucial component of this renewable energy mix.
So if our nation intends to obtain 20% of its power from wind by the year 2020, and is mandated to obtain 25% of its power from the aggregate portfolio of alternative sources by 2025, then how are we doing now, as we approach the mid-year mark of 2009? Well, “currently,” wind power provides less than 1% of our electricity.
In regards to the work force required to deliver that scant 1% of electrons to our sockets, the wind industry employs about 85,000 wind technicians - or windsmiths - who are the workers that climb up those towers 300 feet to monitor and service the equipment in work are of the turbine, which is called the nacel.
In addition to the windsmiths, there are countless other workers employed in all other areas of the industry, including development and design, parts supply, manufacture and assembly, software, accounting, and finance - essentially, the wind industry, like all businesses, employs a cadre of support professionals, whose broad range of skills and expertise are necessary to support the business and logistical aspects of any industry.
But the critical sector of the future wind industry work force will be windsmiths. In order to meet the a goal of 20% wind energy by 2020, an additional 425,000 to 500,000 windsmiths will need to be thoroughly trained and brought into the work force. And when the U.S. becomes deadly serious about climate change and begins curtailing carbon emissions by moving aggressively to end dirty coal and to maximize clean wind energy, then the work force of windsmiths will swell by at least another million - or possibly more, for a total of at least 1.5 million.
That number of 1.5 million new green jobs for windsmiths doesn’t include all of the other professionals who will be hired to support the more mundane facets of the wind industry.
How Does Wind Make Electricity?
It may not be apparent from a distance, but wind turbines are larger than a semi-truck and they weigh 30 or more tons. When a worker pokes his head out of the hatch of the nacel, the scale of the turbine dwarfs the windsmith.
In a typical wind turbine, wind energy is converted to rotational motion by a rotor, or propeller, which turns a shaft that passes into a gearbox, or transmission. The transmission increases the rotational speed and is attached to a high-speed output shaft, which in turn drives an electrical generator. There are a number of variations on the familiar three blade tower, including horizontal cages, helix, and others.
Wind turbines come in a variety of sizes depending on the planned use for the electricity. Some wind turbines are used to charge batteries for buildings not connected to the utility grid. Some turbines can supply all or part of the electricity used by a business or farm. Large-scale wind farms with multiple turbines are used to harvest the wind above acres of land, usually to feed power into the electrical grid. (Theoretically, these wind farms are so immense that they diminish the power of the wind substantially enough to make some storms pause.)
Today, the world’s largest wind turbine is the Enercon E-126, which has a rotor diameter of 126 meters (413 feet). Officially rated at 6 megawatts, it can produce over 7 megawatts, or 20 million kilowatt hours per year. That’s enough power to run about 5,000 households of four in Europe. Or, here in the U.S., where energy use is much higher, it would power about 1700 households.
Wind Advantages
The advantages of wind power are that electricity derived from wind will eliminate the need to build more polluting legacy power plants, while generating no pollution of air, water or soil. Wind power is renewable (non-depletable) and, as stated above, there’s enough potential wind energy in the U.S. to power the entire country.
Additionally, because of its modular nature, it’s easy to add wind generation capacity as needed. That’s because, compared to the construction time for a legacy fossil fuel or nuclear power plant, the installation of wind turbines is relatively quick. Plus, the price of wind power isn’t affected by increases in fuel price or supply disruptions. And, because the towers are high in the air, and because they are broadly spaced, wind farms allow multiple uses of land; crops, livestock, recreation, and (offshore) slalom courses are often found between wind towers. In fact, on any wind farm only 5% of the land is “occupied” by turbines and support structures, the remainder is still available for other uses.
Now the Bad News
The wind sector has already experienced tremendous growth. This growth has continued with a series of dips due to inconsistent government policy and the whipsaw effects of the ups and downs of the price of gasoline upon wind development.
So if, as appears to be the case, wind truly is a key component of our clean and independent energy future, then we are not preparing.
This is troubling because this is an important energy source upon which our nation will long be reliant for dependable, clean electricity. As such, there is a conspicuous lack of planning to provide educational opportunities to ensure that the required cadre of qualified windsmiths will be ready to meet the expansion of wind.
In order for the U.S. to get serious about clean energy and energy independence, there should be clear paths for kids graduating from high school this spring, but there aren’t.
There should be information on wind careers available to our soldiers returning from Iraq, who have arguably served in a war for oil that might have been unnecessary had our nation paid attention to the ramification of the first oil crises back in the glam rock 70’s.
There should be grants and scholarships for inner city people, and there should be programs for those who are reentering society after serving time for a nickel bag of weed! But, disappointingly, there are few opportunities and even less information available for any prospective windsmiths. Even the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is remiss for failing to providing substantial information to students, vets, parolees, and the disenfranchised - all of whom are entitled to participate in the new green economy.
Trapped on Blind Island
Imagine an island nation, busily building boats to navigate towards a green horizon, yet neglecting to shape the oars or to select and train the paddlers. Are they going anywhere soon?
Yet there are jobs! Recently, GE announced that they would guarantee a job to every qualified graduate of the Mesalands wind program in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Students graduating from the Iowa Lakes wind training program report that they receive offers for two to three jobs.
According to research among windsmith recruiters, the most common source of new employees for a wind farm is… to lure experienced windsmiths away from another farm, by offering better pay and benefits.
Although there’s plenty of demand for windsmiths, there are too few opportunities to prepare for the work. There are only a handful of classes and even fewer programs that offer full training beyond an initial entry-level certificate. The only institution that offers a fully-developed curriculum with an option to pursue wind education to the PhD level is Texas Tech. Yet to implement a full-scale energy renaissance, won’t we need highly trained and deeply specialized wind scholars, engineers, and inventors?
The classes that are available fill up as soon as they are announced. For example, Cerro Coso Community College, near Tehachapi, California, recently reported that upon opening their 28 week wind program for enrollment, all 15 of the slots were filled within an hour. The next session was filled immediately as well.
This is a curious problem, because a windsmith’s job is probably the most demanding of all jobs in the alternative energy and green jobs sector. Consequently, the more training prospective windsmiths receive, the better able they are to work well and work safe.
Although a competent contractor or electrician can be quickly trained within a few weeks to work install solar, and while a regular guy off the street can do energy efficiency (all it requires is a desire to work and relatively good hands), by comparison windsmiths are the special ops crew of the renewable energy sector.
The best windsmiths will combine the athletic agility and endurance of an alpine mountaineer, with the acumen of an engineer and will include a broad competence in many disciplines, including mechanics, hydraulics, aerodynamics, hydraulics, utility lineman, electrical engineering, structural engineering.. In addition to these skills and traits these windsmiths will have advanced first aid and safety training. In regards to safety, the training involves both safety procedures and preemptive thinking. That’s because most accidents in this sector don’t provide a second chance. Windsmiths must be hyper-vigilant; the occupation combines dizzying heights, tight spaces, high-voltage electricity, and merciless spinning metal. Although fatalities are rare, they are unquestionably gruesome: death plunges, flaming electrocutions, and being sucked into the turbine and ground to a pulp are among the more obvious risks.
The Solution
Our near-term need for clean renewable energy is most likely to be solved by industrial scale wind farm developments. If, in the next five to seven years we build our wind capacity to satisfy just 20% of America’s electricity needs, over half a million jobs will be created for windsmiths. More jobs will follow as the promise of wind energy is fulfilled until wind generation supplies as much as twice the electricity that is now generated by all sources. In order to realize the pending boom in wind energy it is imperative to expedite the graduation of a steady stream of highly trained technicians.
In this epoch of converging economic implosion, peak oil, climate change, and innumerable social issues exacerbated by limited budgets and broadening educational needs it is imperative, indeed crucial, to bridge the gaps between separate entities with obvious common interests and potential common goals.
In order to meet the need for that many windsmiths, a war-time approach is probably required. The most efficient path towards full deployment of windsmith curricula will be to coordinate between educational institutions within each state and to form alliances between the states themselves.
A key strategy for funding and supporting these windsmith training programs will be the development of industry liaisons to promote and support a spectrum of educational programs, that will run the gamut of educational levels, from certificate to PhD.
In this time of urgency and crises, the economy and enhanced power of enlightened synergies becomes more crucial. Yet individual states lack inter-state collaboration in their educational programs to train renewable energy technicians while the states themselves show little or no intra-state coordination between their own institutions which may, or may not, have programs to train renewable energy technicians. At the time of this writing, access to windsmith training is woefully inadequate and piecemeal.
It’s time to bring the universities, colleges, junior colleges, and technical schools to the table in order to develop a best practices forum for the training of windsmiths and to ensure the dissemination of a rapid, fully formed core curriculum that can be implemented wherever it is needed. In order for this to happen, it would make sense to bring other concerns to the party.
At least at the educational level, turbine manufacturers and other key players of the industry are not allied - neither amongst themselves nor with the array of educational facilities that offer turbine technician training - to promote either general or turbine-specific technical training. In addition to the turbine manufacturers, the power companies can be shown that they have a vested interest in the development of the wind sector in order to meet federal and state mandated Renewable Energy Portfolio (REP) standards and to hasten the maturity of alternative energy so that the power companies can progress from transition to profit.
Similarly, grid operators have a vested interest in hastening the development of this sector in order to make their pending investment in the smart grid deliver the greatest possible benefit for the least cost. Mindful that transition time is expensive, efficiencies of scale can be achieved by the coordination of both centralized and distributed renewable energy installations will pay huge dividends.
Who then should these training opportunities benefit? Training for the professional technical green arena should, of course, be open to high school graduates of merit. But at the most egalitarian level, consistent with Obama’s stimulus plan (as originally envisioned by Van Jones and promulgated in Jones’ book, The Green Collar Economy), these jobs should - through grants and scholarships and neighborhood workforce programs - be broadly inclusive of inner city citizens who have, until now, been excluded from the American dream. Yes, I mean people of all race and color, as well as those rebounding from life challenges, such as parolees for non-violent petty crimes, and who demonstrate a desire to improve the prospects for themselves and their families.
To those who would balk at such liberality, saying, “Why give these people a chance?” The simple answer is, “Because it’s in your best interest.”
As America moves forward in this new millennium of unprecedented challenges, there can be no green revolution, and no lasting economic stability if it is not universal; energy apartheid would fail the dream of rebuilding and renewing America.
Conclusions: The Sooner the Better
The promise of clean, renewable energy security is at hand. While it is imperative to develop a broad portfolio of new energy sources, the most immediate, mature, and scalable source of renewable industrial scale energy is wind.
The war-time initiative would ensure that we seize this opportunity rather than “blowing it.” If we are fighting to stabilize our way of life, to secure our borders and to ensure an equitable future for all of our children, then we should be serious about it. In the bargain, we will attain a new level of camaraderie and move our nation back to the forefront of technology and industry.
To accomplish this level of cooperation, unprecedented since our country pulled together with unified purpose and resolve in World War II, we need a top-down imperative. At the national level, there should be a Wind Officer - either at the White House or at the Department of Energy. (Yes, Mr. President, Sir, my hand is in the air.)
Collaboration is Latin for, “work together.” The Wind Officer’s job would be to bring all of the players together, from across the now irrelevant borders of state lines, educational institutions, and industry. These players would be given a war-time edict to work together, to synergize and share, with the intention that we use wind to build a new model of collaboration.
We need to learn how to collaborate to obtain the highest and best use of existing curricula and facilities by recognizing the best plans and best practices and then duplicating them at as many campuses as possible all across America; then, and only then, will the promise of clean renewable wind energy be met. Collaboration in this manner to harness wind will provide the seeds for collaboration upon innumerable other challenges facing our nation and our world. Collaboration for wind energy is our highest and best hope to sail to a green horizon. The sooner we set sail, the better.
Will we do it? I don’t know. I certainly hope that answer is in our hearts and not, as the song says, just “blowin’ in the wind.”
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This paper is available in downloadable format at: www.jonwarrenlentz.com/downloads/Blowin_in_the_Wind.pdf
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 7:49 am and is filed under Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Environment, Green Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.