Wind Power Can Change the World -- Why Aren't We Investing In It?

Jim Dehlsen, America’s most successful wind power innovator and entrepreneur, has been tilting at windmills since the early 1980s.

Back then, he installed one of the largest wind farms in the world in the mountains near Mojave, Calif., where a strong gust could snap a windmill blade in two. He called it his “Victory Garden.”

Today, at 73, Dehlsen is producing one of the most advanced and efficient windmills in the world, employing 300 people at a plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And he is building a plant in England to manufacture the largest offshore windmill in the world, creating 500 green jobs.

Like Don Quixote of La Mancha, the errant knight of windmill fame, Dehlsen is on a life’s quest, propelled by the vision of a moral world — by his definition, a planet that is much less dependent on coal and oil.

Now, he is drawing on his expertise in wind to explore the untapped energy of the sea. With his son Brent, Dehlsen has designed an underwater “windmill” to harvest the unstoppable flow of the Gulf Stream off Florida. For the wind-whipped waters off the U.S. West Coast, the Dehlsens have designed a grid of floating pods equipped with pistons to capture the energy in the rise and fall of the waves.

In his lifetime, Jim Dehlsen hopes to see the ocean powering American homes and providing American jobs.

“We’re determined to make it happen,” he said. “I really want to see this in deployment. The continental shelf off the coast of Florida extends out 20 miles, and flowing over it is a river that has a constant flow equal to 50 times all the rivers of the planet. It’s just tremendous. It’s always there.”

What’s not always there, Dehlsen said, is government support in grants and subsidies for pioneers who, like him, struggle to come up with the millions needed to invest in new technologies in renewable energy. Federal support for wind blows hot and cold: During the past decade, tax credits for wind power have expired and been extended -- usually for one or two years at most -- on seven different occasions, creating uncertainty in the market and scaring investors away. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or stimulus fund, gave wind power big boost with cash grants covering 30 percent of construction costs, but the time frame, as usual, was short: To qualify, projects have to begin construction by the end of this year.

By contrast, the U.S. government showers support on fossil fuels for electricity.

Most of Dehlsen’s early competitors went bankrupt in 1985, when the first round of subsidies dried up. After giving birth to the wind-power industry, the U.S. lost its position as the top producer of wind power in the world for more than two decades. It holds the No. 1 spot for now, but China is the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines.

The U.S. also has ceded a global market in offshore wind to Europe, where generous government subsidies, higher energy prices and $7-per-gallon gasoline provide a more favorable climate for renewables. Denmark built the first offshore “wind park” in 1991, and as of last year, according to one report, there were 67 in operation or pending in Northern Europe.

The first offshore wind farm in the U.S., a 131-turbine project off Cape Cod, was approved by the U.S. interior secretary in April. The turbines themselves will be manufactured by Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering conglomerate.

“In Europe, the oil and gas industries have much less influence on government policymaking,” Dehlsen said. “That kind of environment is crucial for wind.”

Likewise, in the field of marine renewable energy, the U.S. is roughly a decade behind Europe, where 15 tidal energy and 13 wave energy plants are in operation or pending, primarily in the British Isles. By contrast, the U.S. has installed only a few pilot projects, including a “power buoy” off Hawaii and tidal energy turbines in New York City’s East River. As noted in a special issue of Oceanography this month on marine renewable energy, the industry doesn’t even have the proper infrastructure to test new devices.