Second wind.

During the last decade, mind energy was synonymous with California, where as recently as 1986 wind turbines in just three mountain passes produced 95 percent of the world's wind-generated electricity. But the Golden State, and the United States with it, stand a good chance of losing the lead in wind energy to a surging European industry in just a few years, according to wind energy experts.

Building on the European Community's commitment to take action against global warming, renewable energy advocates have integrated this energy source into national energy plans across the continent, unleashing a storm of wind turbine installations.

By the end of 1992, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom - Europe's top wind power producers - had installed enough wind turbines to reduce the U.S. share of world wind power generation to 67 percent. The real portent of the change ahead, though, can be seen in the number of turbines being installed or planned. While projected growth of U.S. wind installations has flattened, European countries have enough capacity on schedule to be outproducing the United States by 1996, according to Paul Gipe, the American Wind Energy Association's top industry analyst.

Europe is blessed with ample amounts of what wind energy mavens call "technical potential." Wind blows hardest and steadiest along coastlines and in mountains, and Europe's geography abounds with both. In fact, the European Wind Atlas reports that the continent has more than enough potential wind energy to meet all of the European Community's electricity needs, although almost half of the resource is concentrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The European Community intends to tap into that potential. Through a renewable energy program called ALTENER, it has called for 1 percent of projected demand for electricity to be met with 8,000 megawatts of wind power capacity by 2005 (see table).

National Commitments to Wind Power

Country                   Commitment (Installed Capacity)

Denmark                                   1,500 MW by 2005
Netherlands                               1,000 MW by 2000
German states:
  Schelswig Holstein                      1,000 MW by 2000
  Lower Saxony                            1,000 MW by 2005
Italy                                       300 MW by 2000
Spain                                       180 MW by 2000
United Kingdom                            1,000 MW by 2000(1)
European Community                        8,000 MW by 2005

(1) U.K. has made this commitment for all forms of renewable
energy.
Source: Paul Gipe, American Wind Energy Association

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), the Rome-based trade group that represents the industry's interests throughout Europe, has even grander plans. The group has set a lofty goal for the year 2030 of 100,000 megawatts, enough to supply 10 percent of Europe's electricity.

"That goal will only be achieved if the political objectives of renewable energy are clearly formulated and used to change the established systems within the utilities, planning authorities, and administrative systems," says Andrew Garrad, author of EWEA's strategy document, Time for Action: Wind Energy In Europe. The political momentum created by these national commitments to wind energy has begun this reform process.

On top of the support of national governments that treat global warming as a legitimate threat, Europe's wind energy producers enjoy several other advantages over their American counterparts, namely a strong green political movement and a tradition of greater government involvement in energy policy.

The success of the Green parties across Europe in the 1980s gave wind power a vital boost. To counteract the whittling away of support in their liberal wings, mainstream political parties like the Social Democrats usurped Green party platforms, including those anti-nuclear sections related to renewable energy. As the renewable technology most competitive with traditional power sources (seven cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with about five cents for a new coal-fired plant), wind energy became a logical priority in new energy plans.

After years of pressure by green groups, governments in Europe have become active partners in promoting wind energy. They fund research into better turbine designs, subsidize the installation of wind turbines, and provide premium payments for wind-generated electricity, all of which has shielded fledgling European wind companies from the boom and bust cycles that wrench California's industry, now reduced to a single turbine manufacturer.

As Europe's private wind power companies mature, the governments are shifting their focus to pushing the public utilities and local planning authorities to adopt wind power through regulations, financial incentives, and joint ventures. One noteworthy example is a recent Dutch partnership between a private technical research institute, a national utility, and the federal government to design and market a new generation of super-efficient wind turbines.

With the future looking so bright for wind power in Europe, it's doubly ironic that the primary constraint to the industry's achieving its potential is also what led to its genesis: concern for the environment. Citizens' groups have opposed and successfully blocked wind power installations by objecting to the visual and noise pollution created by clusters of wind turbines.

One country where this part of the drama is being played out is the Netherlands. Proposals to site wind turbines atop the country's much beloved dikes have met with fierce opposition, even though windmills have been Dutch cultural icons for six centuries. As the second most densely populated country in the world after Bangladesh, the Netherlands has few remote places to locate the thousands of turbines called for in the country's new national energy plan. Given the stark alternatives of dirty fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear power, wind power may win out. "The future of wind energy will hinge on the public accepting the visual impact of wind turbines as the small price to pay for clean energy," says C.A. Westra, a professor at the University of Amsterdam.

A possible solution to this constraint could come from efforts to build turbines out at sea. The advantage is that breezes are stronger and more frequent. The disadvantage is that the construction and transmission costs combined with the corrosive effects of salt water make off-shore wind power twice as expensive as wind power from land. Widespread use of this option will have to wait until the advances in turbine design expected around 2000 bring generation costs down to about four cents per kilowatt-hour.

Another possible solution may come from the ongoing work of Danish manufacturers Bonus and Vestas to design cost-effective turbines with at least twice as much capacity as today's biggest models. These machines would produce more electricity from fewer machines, requiring less land.

Southern European countries are lagging behind their northern neighbors in the sudden rush to wind power, not because they lack ideal locations for wind farms, but because up until recently they did not enjoy the research facilities or market development funding that their neighbors to the north can provide. A taste for what could happen in the future came last year, when the European Community provided technical assistance to Spanish wind producers, setting off a flurry of turbine installations. On the hills above the Straits of Gibraltar there are already plans to install turbines with at least 200 megawatts of capacity, an amount equal to almost one-fourth of current European capacity.

Fueled with the resolve to honor their Earth Summit commitments to reduce carbon emissions, Europeans should manage to sail through most obstacles to wider use of wind power. The challenge for their American competitors is to design a strategy for keeping the lead in the global competition to extract electricity from the wind.