Into this arena, the 33M-VS was unveiled. The machine's computer-adjusted fiberglass blades tilt up and down to catch optimal gusts and sweep 108 feet in diameter: More important, the blades speed up or slow down depending on the breeze. Older windmills, in order to feed a constant frequency of electricity to utility companies, operate at one speed even when the winds rise, imposing stressful torque on the rotors not unlike what happens when you drive a car downhill in first gear, says Grebey. But the efficient 33M-VS adapts to high winds, and it produces power at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour or less, the company says.
Not surprisingly, the news has filled the sails of the U.S. wind industry, which aims to provide 10 to 20 percent of the nation's electricity needs by 2030 -- a goal that can only be reached if Kenetech and other companies are wildly successful. The nation currently claims 17,000 wind turbines -- more than 90 percent are still in California -- which provide enough electricity to serve the residential power needs of San Francisco or Detroit, according to EPRI. But thousands of megawatts remain untapped. North Dakota alone is so windy it could supply more than a third of the electric consumption of the entire Lower 48; 14 states suffer winds equal to or mightier than California's. And the benefits of using wind can be enormous: The electricity generated in California alone replaces the energy equivalent of 5 million barrels of oil and avoids 1.3 million tons of carbon emissions, EPRI estimates.
But is all this for the birds?
"We are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel," says Kenetech vice president William Whalen, head of the National Park Service under President Jimmy Carter. "We're addressing the bird problems, we're developing technology and we're confident that the equipment we're putting in the field will have a lot less problems than the old equipment." Whalen seconds Tom Cade's prediction: "Kenetech will reduce the mortality strikes by 50 percent."
The company is promising to consult, in the future, with bird experts and conservation groups before building wind plants (it has already done so in Maine and other states), and it is apologizing for Tarifa, Spain. Kenetech didn't originally know about the trouble there, Whalen says. In its expansion plans, Whalen says Kenetech will outfit Tarifa turbines with radar systems that will shut down the machines if migrating birds approach.
"If you step back and think about environmentalists' role in the world and the role of Kenetech, which is to provide a clean source of energy around the world, then you can certainly see a convergence," Whalen says. "Our goals are mutual."
And yet, they are not.
Environmental groups don't have to satisfy shareholders. Conservationists want to impose strict limits on where wind farms can be built. The wind industry, though it's willing to negotiate, would love to build wherever it finds bent trees and windsurfers. It doesn't want to pull out machines where there is bird trouble, critics say; it would rather paint them. It doesn't want to piss off bird lovers, they add: It would rather hire them.
And we, our computers ablaze, our air conditioners sweating, our monster trucks revving, our presidential limos idling all day at the curb -- we, the world's energy hogs, would rather not light a candle against the darkness. PPPFFFTTT.It is another cloudy day, and I am burning fossil fuels to drive the back roads around Altamont Pass, looking for golden eagles. All the experts' voices burble back to me: You have to make a choice, they say. The windmills on either side of me stand flaccid; the breeze is low. Are these things as ominous as the derricks pumping oil and the smokestacks fouling the air and the hazardous wastes leaking into the groundwater? Of course not. But then again ....I screech to a halt at the sight of a dark-breasted bird. It's a turkey vulture, sitting on a turbine. I park on the gravel shoulder, and at the sight of me, the bird flies off -- smart bird, I praise it -- and lands on a blade farther off.
The vulture stares silently down at me and I realize how weak the Kenetech song is. We're spending lots of money on research! And if we can prove there are plenty of eagles, then the slaughter is okay!
The environmentalists' song is no stronger. By accepting the compromises of the real world and enthusiastically supporting the establishment of the wind industry, they entered the devil's bargain that now prevents them from fighting the power companies. They can only pray that Kenetech will keep its promises in Spain. They can only applaud Kenetech's commitment to studies that have failed to protect a single bird. They can only counsel Kenetech critics to be patient.
Here in the almost wilds of Altamont Pass, the environmentalists and Kenetech have reached that point where solutions become problems -- the point at which there is blood on the answer.
