Oakland, California: the world's largest green-powered city

摘要

Over the last ten years, the amount of electricity generated by nonpolluting windpower has jumped from 1,700 megawatts (MW) to 11,000 MW. Wind-powered generators are now the fastest-growing source of electricity in the world. A study by Greenpeace and the European Wind Energy Association predicted that if just ten percent of the world's electricity came from windpower, it would prevent the release of ten million metric tons of CO_2 while creating 1.7 million new jobs. In 1999, the US Department ofEnergy announced plans to obtain five percent of US electricity from windpower by the year 2020. That same year, retired Amherst Univesity Professor Bill Heronemus, the first person to propose harvesting the tremendous energy of offshore winds, was honored with the American Wind Energy Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. "There is an absolute requirement for the Earth to remain in thermal balance within our solar system," he said in his acceptance speech. "There is only one ultimate solution to the global warming problem - total reliance upon solar energy. And the most productive of all solar energy processes is the wind energy process."