The Wind Power Story - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 9

companies. Thus, anything above USD 10 billion must be paid by
the payer of last resort—namely the taxpayer. It is impossible to put
a precise cost figure on a nuclear accident because of the individual
circumstances and the long-range generational efects and the
human costs, but the numbers can be astronomical. The second
subsidy is the cost of disposing of nuclear wastes, some of which
will be around for over 100000 years. There is still no adequate
solution to the disposal problem after decades of research. It is
impossible to put an upper limit on what nuclear energy waste
products will have cost humanity when the final record is written.
The third hidden cost is public research funds. In the IEA countries
in the three decades between 1974 and 2002, nuclear energy
received 58% of energy research funds, or USD 175 billion, and
fossil fuels 13%. Wind energy received only 1%.
Wave power has great potential but a major breakthrough
still lies ahead. We cannot count on it as yet. In the meantime,
we should be allocating major resources to further studies and
experimentation.
The much-hyped “hydrogen economy” is not a viable solution
to the energy shortage either. It takes more energy to produce
hydrogen than it contains. But hydrogen does have the advantage
that it can be stored as fuel for fuel cells and used to power electric
cars. The problem is: where do we get the energy to produce the
hydrogen? Do we use the declining supplies of non-renewable
sources like natural gas, coal and nuclear power? That is certainly
not a sustainable policy. Should we use the limited sources of
renewable energy such as wind and solar? Firstly, that would
mean diverting them from other more critical uses, and secondly,
there is simply not enough energy available from these sources in
the intermediate term. And besides, what is available is expensive.
The best we can hope for is to maintain the automobile culture for
a little while longer. Whether hydrogen production will be the best
way to use the limited energy available in a post peak-oil world
is highly questionable.
That leaves wind and solar as the two most promising
alternatives. Considering that wind power is also the most
environmentally friendly of all the alternatives (with the possible
exception of wave power), and the sun is a limitless energy source
(at least on the human scale), then there can be little doubt that
wind and solar power is where the major investments should