New Wind Turbines Offset 43 Million Tons of Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Wind turbines installed worldwide in 2006 produced 15,200 megawatts of energy -- the same amount of energy as "23 average-sized U.S. coal-fired power plants," according to the Worldwatch Institute.

"Wind power is on track to soon play a major role in reducing fossil fuel dependence and slowing the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," according to Worldwatch Senior Researcher Janet Sawin. "Already, the 43 million tons of carbon dioxide displaced by the new wind plants installed last year equaled more than 5 percent of the year’s growth in global emissions. If the wind market quadruples over the next nine years—a highly plausible scenario—wind power could be reducing global emissions growth by 20 percent in 2015."

The report states that the wind power outpaced the global growth of coal and nuclear plants combined, demonstrating that many countries -- including India and China -- are exploring more environmentally-friendly energy sources.

How much would it cost to replace all coal-based power plants in the United States?

The question isn't addressed in the press release, but an estimate can be made from publicly accessible data.

I will assume that 15,200 megawatts of power from wind turbines can be installed for $22 billion -- from data in this article -- and that our country currently has 600 coal-fired power plants generating 500 megawatts each -- from the Union of Concerned Scientists. (It says typical output is 500 megawatts, but I'm just going to use that as the average.)

This allows us to estimate that coal-fired power plants generate 300,000 megawatts of electricity. A little math tells us that installing enough wind turbines to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity costs approximately $1.447 billion, which comes to $434.2 billion to replace the 300,000 megawatts of electricity currently generated by coal-fired plants.

Figuring out how long it would take to recoup that investment is something I can't do, as I don't have maintenance cost statistics available. Can anyone point me toward that data?

2006 Wind Installations Offset More Than 40 Million Tons of CO2 [press release]

Image: dkimages.com