Engineers at the University of Alberta have made a significant breakthrough in wind energy technology, developing a small-scale generator that is cheaper and more efficient than any competing technology. The new system can generate electricity from much lower wind speeds–10 km/hr as opposed to the 18 km/hr required by current small-scale wind systems. It can be built with a few, simple electronic components that are cheap and easy to find, use and repair. Dr. Andy Knight, the lead on the project, believes that wind energy might one day become a viable source of energy for everyone to use.
The importance of developments such as this to building a Green economy can’t be understated. They touch on at least four of the ten key values–decentralization, ecological wisdom, sustainablity, and community based economics.
A vital step toward a Green economy involves getting off the grid. The nation-wide electricity grid centralizes control over energy in a few hands, and it is enormously inefficient–more than half of all the electricity that is generated in this country is needed just to get the power through the wires.
Corporate control is the reason that you see billions and billions of dollars being poured into huge, centralized projects such as breeder reacters, nuclear fusion experiments, and the ever elusive hydrogen economy. Technologies that would put energy generation directly into people’s hands get all but ignored, except by university labs and private organizations.
But in the end, I believe that the small scale, efficient power generators will win out.