Wind Energy and Its Incredible Improvements

Wind energy, at its core, is about using large, tall turbines with several protruding petals to harness the power of the air flow of wind, creating electricity mechanically. Other than the footprint of the turbines and the possible dangers of the moving petals to airborne wildlife, wind power has a very small environmental footprint and overall has an incredible potential to use nothing but the weather to help keep our grid running.

The real problem, though, is that it has always taken a lot of turbines to create a sustainable amount of energy. It's not exactly reasonable to cover significant portions of our land with humongous, poled machines if they're not going to create a required amount of energy to replace fossil fuels.

A wind turbine / CC by jonbgem

One of the biggest advancements in recent years in regards to wind turbines has been capacity per turbine. While many efforts in turbine technological evolution have been about maximizing the potential total energy output of the turbines themselves, recent advances have focused more on the maximizing the actual day-to-day output of individual turbines, lowering costs and creating the best return on investment that wind power has seen in years.

These sorts of breakthroughs are really important as the planet continues forward towards self-sustainability. The human race is going to find it very difficult to find itself eternally churning forward if we continue to rely on finite resources of any kind, especially ones that are actively harming our planet and making things actively worse for future generations.

This sort of imperative isn't just a moral one - moral imperatives are important, but in the end ineffective. This is a humanitarian imperative. Real change on renewable energy and its accompanying technology would be a seriously significant step forward for the human race, and that's an important factor to consider.