Objectivity

Wind's Our Future, but Natural Gas Is Now

A few points needed here... let's start with wind...

'Intermittent' Wind is really only a local or temporary phenomenon, not so much a national or annual one, especially in a country as large as the USA. For those who don't understand, think of it like this, ONE wind turbine might be idle on any ONE day... but 1000, spread over thousands of square miles, from year to year, will produce roughly the same power annually over time.

For those inclined to simply bark without thinking, try doing the math first... You have to think of it as what it is... a valuable contributor to overall production of kwh's, part of the load balancing act while also producing large amounts of total grid-power over time.

It's why we have base-load coal and Nuclear feeding the same grid as peaker gas Turbines...

Wind is a hands down winner in the quest for sustainable energy.

As to hydrocarbon-to-spark replacement, which is the real issue, Wind adds large amounts of basically carbon-free and hydrocarbon-miniscule Total Energy, at extremely favorable (15:1 typical) EROEI, and in a sustainable fashion... Wind never depletes, you don't need to transport it, refine it, or burn it.

As to the economics, wind power is strongly accretive to the host nation's capital accounts, especially if the actual turbine engineering, production, and maintanence is domestic sourced. Germany and Denmark are world leaders in Wind, and it helps their economies huge.