An investment in the U.S. power grid to enable wind to supply 20% of the electricity needs of the Eastern U.S. would save consumers $12 billion annually, according to a study released by the Joint Coordinated System Plan (JCSP).
Furthermore, the investment would recover capital costs in as little as seven years while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by almost 3 billion tons per year, the study found.
The study also found that the need for new coal-fired, baseload power plants would be cut in half under the wind and transmission scenario–dispelling the outdated assumption that renewable energy cannot reduce the need for such power. Moreover, the reliability of the power grid would be enhanced, reducing the likelihood of events like the August 2003 blackout that cost consumers and businesses billions of dollars.
Although the study did not calculate wind jobs creation or economic development benefits of the wind and transmission scenario, other studies like the Department of Energy’s “20% Wind Energy by 2030” report have shown that obtaining 20% of the nation’s electricity from wind power would create over 500,000 wind jobs and generate $80 billion per year in economic activity.
The report was prepared by a host of system operators and reliability organizations covering a wide chunk of the U.S., including the Midwest Independent System Operator, SERC Reliability Region, PJM Interconnection LLC, the Southwest Power Pool, the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Also released this week was a report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, titled “The Cost of Transmission for Wind Energy: A Review of Transmission Planning Studies.” Link to that report below.
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Realistically a seven year payback isn’t going to get investors very excited. Especially when Government-backed projects have a tendency to go 50 percent over budget in a matter of seconds. So most investors would be probably thinking about a best case scenario of a 10 year payback. Too many things can go wrong in ten years to make these sort of investments attractive. Job creation shouldn’t be a consideration. If we create jobs that are unproductive, then everyone’s standard of living goes down (ie. communist russia – everyone had a job but no one had anything or any money). So we have to think about productivity. Our first priority should be to conserve. We waste huge amounts of electricity in this country. If we simply became more efficient, we wouldn’t even need most of these new power streams. We’d simply be replacing aged facilities with clean power generation – over the next 30 years.