“No one ever said wind energy wouldn’t be able to meet our energy demands”, says prof.dr. Gerard van Bussel, professor of Wind Energy at TU Delft. In light of the 3TU Master’s program Sustainable Energy Technology he’s also connected to TU/e as a guest professor. “Wubbo Ockels always says there won’t be an energy crisis if we actually use the energy available to us, and I couldn’t agree more. The sun generates such an enormous amount of energy – solar as well as wind – it could fulfill our needs for ages. In my lectures I often refer to a previous study conducted by the same group of Americans. They prove that if wind turbines were placed in all realistic areas on earth, so excluding areas like jungles, permafrost and cities, those could generate eight times the energy the world needs.

The study was heavily criticized because it didn’t look at the potential influence major wind turbine parks could have on the lower layers of the atmosphere. They could be possibly ‘exhausted’, as a result of which there would be less wind. The current study shows these lower layers are ‘replenished’ by the top layers, so there will remain more than enough wind energy to go around. Having said that, it does require building those turbines first.”

“And the greatest dilemma lies in society’s acceptance of wind energy. Countries like Denmark and Germany are working hard to intensify the use of wind energy, because the social resistance has been minimal. In fact, many wind turbine parks were built with the help of citizens’ initiatives. To understand this difference in attitude, I think we have to go back to the seventies. In Denmark and Germany, public utilities encouraged private initiatives, whereas Dutch public utilities were very much against private cooperative initiatives. Instead of realizing we had to continue in a different direction, we said renewable energy sources would disrupt the entire grid as well as the supply guarantee.

We’ve never been able to shake that negativity: 75 percent of the current news on wind energy is off-putting. It’s a trend that needs to change quickly, because wind energy is cheap, the price is fixed for the next twenty years, and it’s reliable at that.”

“We can keep saying wind turbines are ruining ‘our’ landscape, but we’d be talking about ‘our’ landscape of last millennium. We’ve entered a new millennium and there’s a new landscape to go with it, including modern infrastructure and local, sustainable energy supply. The Netherlands could easily generate 25 percent of their annual electricity consumption through wind energy. For now, all we can do is wait for a government that dares to innovate and is willing to warm citizens to the idea. Until then, I’ll just keep screaming from the top of my lungs: wind energy has the future!”