Wind energy is some of the cleanest energy there is. It’s relatively cheap to produce and easy to install, and produces power fairly reliably. So, but what happens if we transition to nothing but wind power? As dumb as it sounds, will we run out of wind? The answer seems to be “probably not,” but there will be consequences.
When asking the question of whether we’ll run out of wind to power wind turbines, what we’re really asking is whether we’ll run out of areas with wind that are powerful enough (and reliable enough) to produce a consistent and economically viable amount of energy. Researchers from the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have taken a look at just how much wind energy it would be possible to extract from the atmosphere with wind turbines, and we’re happy to report that there’s a lot more wind out there than we’re likely to be able to harness in the near future.
via DVICE
