by Paul Gipe
Copyright 2001 by Paul Gipe. All rights reserved. This essay may not be copied or circulated without express permission.
. . . the Danish [wind] industry has since followed a far different path than the small turbine industry has in the United States. The once small turbines of Danish manufacturers gradually grew bigger, becoming the core of the world's commercial wind power industry."
. . . In Denmark, and since 1991 in Germany as well, wind turbines are paid a fair price for their generation. Germany's Electricity Feed Law, the Stromeinspeisungsgesetz, requires utilities to buy wind-generated electricity at 90% of the retail rate. Danish utilities are required to pay 85% of the retail rate. In addition, the Danish government refunds a carbon dioxide tax collected on all electricity generated in the country. Wind turbines in these two countries earn about $0.10 per kWh. This contrasts sharply with the $0.02-$0.04 per kWh paid in North America in states without net metering.
. . . The result has been the steady growth of distributed wind turbines in Germany and Denmark. About two-thirds of the several thousand wind turbines installed in the two countries are owned by farmers or cooperatives of local residents, a reality not unlike the image once envisioned by proponents of wind energy in North America.
With Electricity Feed Laws in the United States and Canada like that in northern Europe, we would quickly find interconnected wind turbines blossoming again in North America.