Winds of Change

by Frances Lamberts

They install or retrofit "new energy" systems or components in homes -- co-generation heat pumps or solar-powered ones, or pumps storing thermal energy from soil or groundwater. In public or industrial buildings "absorber" elements embedded in concrete walls or structures, which collect and store radiant heat from the air. With buildings responsible for more than a third of total energy consumption, they say, it makes no sense to delay energy-saving improvements there. Personal and public interest in conserving energy is broadly evident. It is hard, indeed, to find a home or public building -- whether church or bank or town hall or beer hall -- not fitted with energy-conserving light bulbs to lesson energy draw, from whatever its source.

Such adaptations are not always obvious to casual view. But the towering presence, in Germany, of the wind mills is. They impress one as being "everywhere," seemingly sprouted overnight as fall mushrooms after a rain. They are as sleek, individual towers or aggregations from two to twenty or more. They whir gently in the wind, in villages from the Belgian border to the countryside approaching Dresden, from the Mosell river to Denmark's border. They dot hillsides along the Rhine and the flat and windy heath and marsh country in Schleswig-Holstein. They are adjacent to building and on farmland, turbine breezes slowly fanning contented cattle under them. They line up in "windrows" as neatly as grain and rape fields and pastures under them are aligned. They whir by along motor-vehicle highways and beckon from bicycling and walking trails. Farmers vie for them, rental fees under lease arrangement, or electricity-sale contracts under owner arrangement, being good income. Municipalities even vie for them for installment on public land, for similar income and sometimes in conflict with farmers' plans.

Wind mills are not newcomers to the country's experience, especially in its northern states. They have been around, there, since at least sixteen hundred. They served to harness power for many functions and in many different circumstances -- to grind flour and power saw mills, for draining and irrigating fields, in tanning and fulling mills, and in bone meal and paper making and oil-well operations. One of the north area's oldest, built by a town's mayor in 1598 as back-up power source should water shortages hamper operation of the flour mill, now holds an honors place in the museum village of Cloppenburg. Occasionally, though, a veteran 19th-century wind mill can still be found in the Holstein countryside, neighborly companion to one of its 21st-century, towering, clean-cut turbine kin.

Germany is among the industrial countries seeking to abide by commitments made under the Kyoto Treaty, to seek abatement of the carbon emissions which are implicated in global climate warming. It seeks to meet the carbon reduction target through domestic action rather than through emission trading schemes. It has shaped its national energy policy accordingly -- "in the interest of climate protection and protection of the environment," as its Renewable Energy Act states. It promotes wind power and other renewables through feed-in provisions and fixed payment contracts to power producers. It stimulates home and building "modernization" through subsidies for energy-saving and alternative-energy options. It allows customers choice in purchasing electricity from any supplier with preferred level or type of renewable-energy offerings. It charges users a surcharge, used for support and development of the "new energy" system.

It has made wind energy boom and wind mills a part of the German landscape.

Not all travellers and viewers welcome their sight at all times. But one cannot argue the advantages, they readily admit. Wind mills make energy with no harmful emissions, no wastes. They can be brought online sooner than traditional power plants. Their energy economy in development, manufacturing, and installation far exceeds that of conventional power plants, being recouped within the first six to eight months instead of that many years. Their impact on the land is small. And wind is free of charge, available to all, with practically unlimited flow. That does away with market price fluctuations and energy import dependency. It makes sense that modern economies develop energy systems that meet their needs from such "homegrown" sources as the wind.

Apparently, Germany is well on the way to becoming one of the top wind-energy producing and wind-installation exporting countries. "For the sixth year in a row," the Worldwatch Institute's Vital Signs 2000 reports, "Germany dominated global wind installations in 1999, with an estimated 1,568 megawatts installed." In that year alone, more than sixteen hundred new turbines began turning on hill sides and pastures and along highways in Germany. The country's total far exceeded nine thousand when I visited there in spring.

My home state, Tennessee, has three. We have a long way to go in the quest for a clean, sustainable energy system in our country.