Global Warming Gives Windmills a Lift

Windmills are springing up again all over the Dutch countryside--not the picturesque wooden machines of 600 years of tradition but sleek metal devices.

The Netherlands is embarking on its biggest windmill building program since steam power and the internal combustion engine made wind power obsolete.

Windmills are suddenly popular as a means of cutting pollution and curbing global warming by generating electricity without burning fossil fuel.

The original windmills helped create much of the Netherlands by draining land in a reclamation program that got under way in earnest in the 17th Century.

The impact of their modern-day counterparts is likely to be more modest. Even in the wind-swept Netherlands, windmills will only supplement other energy sources, experts say.

But spurred on by a 40% government subsidy on installation costs, wind turbine capacity is expected to more than double this year.

“There are a lot of new wind farms being built at the moment because of the subsidy program,” said Ad van Wijk of Utrecht University.

He expects the country’s wind power generation to rise from 40 megawatts at the end of 1989 to 90 megawatts by early 1991 and 400 megawatts by 1995.

The government has set a target of 1,000 megawatts by the end of the century but the unreliability of wind means this will replace only 200 megawatts of conventional capacity, according to the electricity companies’ organization, SEP.

Current power station capacity is 15,000 megawatts.

But, with oil prices recently around their lowest level since 1973, wind power looks expensive. It costs 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour, against four cents for conventional power.

Supporters of wind power, however, argue that the price gap is much less once environmental costs are taken into account and that technical improvements are bringing costs down all the time.

“I am confident that by 1995 we will be producing at 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour . . . and then wind power will be cost effective,” Van Wijk said.

He calculates that electricity from conventional power stations would cost an extra 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour if carbon dioxide emissions were cut by 95%.

Carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse” gases are thought to trap heat in the atmosphere, leading to global warming.

The Netherlands intends to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions over the next four years and an inquiry is being started this year into the use of regulatory energy levies to penalize carbon dioxide production.

“Global warming is a new item on the agenda,” said Leslie de Zilwa, president of the largest Dutch wind power producer, Ijsselmij Energy Co.

“We are discovering that it is not only the capital costs and the fuel costs that count but also the social costs--that is, the cost of removing carbon dioxide and other gases,” he said.

De Zilwa’s firm is about to build another 25 turbines, each 100 feet high, at its wind farm at Urk in the north of the country, doubling capacity to 15 megawatts.

However, windmill operators are finding the environmental factor is not going all their way. Wind power may be clean but many people think lines of turbines stretching across the countryside are unsightly.

One way around the problem could be to build fewer but bigger windmills, producing more power per square foot and cluttering up the countryside less, de Zilwa believes.

The 400 or so wind turbines operating now generate an average of only 100 kilowatts each while those being installed this year range from 250 to 500 kilowatts. But elsewhere in Europe producers are experimenting with single turbines generating 1,000 kilowatts or more. One turbine in the Orkney Islands off Scotland has a capacity of 3,000 kilowatts.