The Energy Department said yesterday that the United States has the ability to meet 20 percent of its electricity-generation needs with wind by 2030, enough to displace 50 percent of natural gas consumption and 18 percent of coal consumption.[…]It wouldn’t be cheap to meet those goals. The report said it would cost nearly $197 billion, but that most of that would be offset by nearly $155 billion in lower fuel expenditures, among other offsetting positive effects like reduced carbon emissions.
The report noted that a big expansion of wind-power generation would also cut the amount of water used by the electricity industry by 17 percent by 2030.
To put an investment like that into perspective, it works out to about $9 billion a year over 22 years. Heck, we spend more than that in Iraq every month.
(Cross-posted at Blogging for Michigan.)
