Wade Rawlins tells us in this morning’s News & Observer:

A steady wind still blows along the shore, and it’s awaiting a new
generation of entrepreneurs to harness its potential ? this time to
produce electricity.

North Carolina has a significant untapped
source of energy, said Bob Leker, renewables program manager for the
State Energy Office. But so far, there have been few commercial-scale
proposals to tap.

It’s actually not surprising, given the problems associated with wind power; Daren Bakst described some of them earlier this year:


Wind power is unreliable, Bakst said. ?Like the wind itself, wind power
is intermittent,? he said. ?The wind must be strong enough, but not too
strong, to generate power. Often wind provides power when it?s not
needed. No one could rely on wind to provide ?baseload electricity
generation,? which is the regular and consistent electricity needed to
meet constant demand. It?s also an electricity source that cannot be
called upon to meet excess demand. That means any community using wind
power must also rely on more reliable conventional sources, such as
coal, nuclear, and gas.?

People who think wind power helps the environment should think again,
Bakst said. ?The National Academy of Sciences has reported that wind
power would not significantly reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide or
sulfur dioxide,? he said. ?Its impact on carbon dioxide emissions would
be miniscule. Plus wind power would have a negligible impact on the
goal of energy independence.?

While the benefits of wind power are hard to find, the high costs are
much easier to see, Bakst said. ?Consider the sheer size of wind power
plants,? he said. ?They take up to 88 times more land than coal plants.
A plant generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity would require acreage
the size of Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Wilmington combined. Placed in
the mountains, it would require 300 miles of ridgeline.?

Wind turbines kill birds and bats, and they cause potential health
hazards for people as well, Bakst said. ?The noise effects of wind
power plants are potentially so severe to people that both the French
National Academy of Medicine and the United Kingdom Noise Association
recommended against building wind turbines within a mile of residences,
at least until further research has been conducted.?