Friday, October 24, 2008

Electrify America with wind for ten years


For the price of the Iraq War, we could've satisfied American electricity demand with wind power for ten years.  

In 2005, America used 3.82 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity.  In their 1996 paper "Alternative Windpower Ownership Structures: Financing Terms and Project Costs," Ryan Wiser and Edward Kahn of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Energy and Environment Division calculated that a properly financed wind farm at a good site could produce electricity at 3.69 cents/kwH, or 5.15 cents/KwH adjusting for inflation.  Supplying America with wind power for a decade at these prices would cost $1.97 trillion, or $1030 billion less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.

Image used under a Creative Commons License from Flidais.