Wind Energy

Backing out oil with wind power: the resource is there By Tom Gray

For a media project yesterday, our in-house statistical experts were asked to come up with some numbers on what it would take to provide the additional electricity if half of the U.S. auto fleet were composed of plug-in electric vehicles.

Here’s what they told us:

If HALF of the U.S. car fleet were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and were powered by clean wind energy:

– We would avoid the use of over 60 billion gallons of gasoline annually;

– We would use 3 billion fewer barrels of oil annually;

– We would avoid the emission of 700 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Further, accomplishing this level of oil reduction would require only 143,400 MW or 82,000 wind turbines. That’s less than 2% of the total wind resource potential in the U.S.

Obviously, replacing half of the nation’s vehicle fleet with plug-in hybrid or electric cars is not something that’s going to happen overnight. We’re just saying, there is far more than enough resource in the mighty wind river flowing by above our heads to do the job.

By Tom Gray, www.awea.org/blog/