Wind energy: energy sustainability perspective

Abstract

Energy is the capability to do work. No work can do without energy. Energy is such prerequisite for, ‗economic development‟ of a country as well as for the improvement of, „quality of life‟ of its population. The United Nations‘ General Assembly accordingly adopted and declared, ―2014 and 2024 as the decade of sustainable energy of all‖. There are many forms of energy e.g. heat, light, biomass, fossil fuel, sound etc. Out of all these forms, ‗electricity‘ is the, ‗most preferred form‟ as it is clean, extremely fast and can be converted to the most other form easily and efficiency. Natural nonrenewable oil and gas are primarily used in transportation and industry. The economic development of a country is much dependent on the availability of quality electricity at an ‗affordable price‘ the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country depends on the capita consumption of primary energy. The per capita annual average electricity consumption of the developed and or OECD countries are more than 10000kWh while that of ‗least developed countries‘ per capita annual electricity consumption rate is less 500kWh. Electricity is however not naturally available. It has to produced from ‗primary sources‟ available in nature. Primary source are generally grouped under two basic types i)‘renewable energy‘ e.g., solar, wind, tide etc whose supply is not affected by rate of use; and ii) Non renewable energy e.g., coal, oil gas, nuclear, fuel etc. whose supply or reserves are affected by the rate of use. Currently about 67% of the global electricity is generated from non renewable coal, gas and oil. The total use of coal, oil and gas are about 6.3 million tons, 4 billion tons and 3.8 trillion m3 respectively. The rate of consumption is increasing. This is not sustainable as the trend will deprive the prosperity from primary energy sources. Hydro power- a renewable source, which is presently considered not environment friendly, generates about 14% of the global electricity and the remaining on 4% of electricity is produced using all other renewable energy source. 2 WIND ENERGY: ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY PESPECTIVE Burning of fossil fuel in power station and other economic activities e.g. transportation emits about 40 billion tons of green house gases annually causing ‗climatic changes. The emission of enormous amount of SOx and NOx are causing ‗acid rain‟. Burning of coal is polluting underground water with deadly „arsenic‟ and „lead‟ air with ‗particulates‘ putting the present generation as well as the future generation into serious health risk. This is not sustainable Renewable energy source wind available throughout the world. Use of wind is the most free from pollution of green house gases and other pollutant stated in the preceding paragraphs. The greater use of wind in the energy mix as such can help in achieving the goal of energy sustainability Majority of the members states Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) either fall in the category of the ‗least developed‟ or in the „developing states‟. These states are situated in either in tropical or subtropical regions. Some of these states have even desert areas and also borders with sea or oceans where the average wind velocity is high. Wind is available throughout the world independent of altitude or latitude. Wind turbines can be set up in the states to generate electricity and the medium electricity demands of domestic, commercial and industrial consumer preferably with hybrid systems. Electricity generated by wind turbines in the desert, sea or isolated area can be fed into power transmission grid networks. This will help in achieving the goal energy sustainability. The use of wind turbines for generating electricity will also diversify the use of primary energy source and will fulfill the objective of conservation of primary sources. It may reduce the overall electricity generation cost. But the materialization of useful and economic wind turbine power systems will require commitments, study and analyses of the local realities, proper planning road map continued efforts by the state policy makers and responsible implementing bodies or organizations. The special study “wind energy; energy sustainability perspective” carried out effort to gather knowledge and ideas on wind technology and wind power generation systems consisting of turbines generators, towers, converters, inverters battery bank, sensing and protecting devices, wind related hybrid power generation system etc. Effort have also been carried out to study and get ideas on the past, present and future trends of developments, economics and technical feasibilities in providing electricity to meet the electricity demands of the states under optimum energy mix. The report presents findings of the study and analyses of the topic 3 WIND ENERGY: ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY PESPECTIVE