Wind Energy as a Clean and Renewable Electricity Source
This literature review synthesizes research on wind energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. The paper traces the history of wind power from ancient Egypt and Babylon to modern commercial wind farms, then examines how wind turbines generate electricity. It evaluates wind energy's environmental advantages, declining costs, and vast resource abundance across the United States and globally. The review also addresses common concerns — intermittency, visual impacts on landscapes, and risks to birds — drawing on multiple peer-reviewed sources to show that wind energy's benefits substantially outweigh its drawbacks. The paper concludes that wind power is well-positioned to play a major role in meeting future electricity demands.
- Introduction: The Global Energy Challenge: Global energy crisis and wind energy's promise
- History of Wind Power: Ancient origins through modern commercial wind farms
- How Modern Wind Energy Works: Turbine technology, capacity growth, and availability
- Environmental and Economic Benefits: Clean emissions profile and falling generation costs
- Wind Energy Resources and Potential: Vast domestic and global wind resource abundance
- Concerns and Criticisms: Intermittency, visual impacts, and bird mortality
- Conclusion: Synthesized case for wind as primary clean energy
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper consistently grounds every major claim in a cited source, creating a well-supported argumentative structure appropriate for a literature review format.
- It moves logically from historical context to technical description to benefits to criticisms, demonstrating awareness of counterarguments before restating the thesis.
- Specific statistics — such as cost per MWh, installed capacity in megawatts, and bird mortality comparisons — give the review concrete evidentiary weight rather than relying on vague generalizations.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies source synthesis: rather than summarizing each source separately, it weaves multiple authors' findings together around thematic claims (e.g., combining Kaygusuz, Demirbas, and Bohn & Lant to build the case for affordability). This is the defining skill of a literature review and distinguishes it from an annotated bibliography.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a global energy context before narrowing to wind energy's place within it. A historical section establishes wind's long track record. Two body sections cover technical and economic advantages, followed by a section on resource abundance. The penultimate section addresses counterarguments (intermittency, aesthetics, wildlife), and the conclusion revisits the thesis with synthesized quotations from key sources. This classic funnel-then-rebut structure is well-suited to a persuasive literature review.
Introduction: The Global Energy Challenge
The world's population currently relies on three main categories of energy sources: fossil, renewable, and fissile. Fossil energy sources include petroleum, coal, natural gas, bitumen, oil shale, and tar sands; renewable energy sources include biomass, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower; and fissile energy sources are uranium and thorium (Demirbas 212). Demirbas also estimates that at the present rate of production, known petroleum reserves will be depleted in less than 50 years (212). Furthermore, energy production from fossil fuels results in high greenhouse gas emissions, creating critical environmental problems throughout the world. According to Demirbas, if the global growth rate of approximately 2% per year in primary energy use continues, energy consumption will be double the 1998 level by 2035 and triple it by 2055 (213). The combination of climate change, escalating oil prices, and concerns about long-term energy security has placed energy at the top of political and policy agendas for the United States and countries around the world.
Demirbas explains that while fossil fuels still represent over 80% of total energy supplies worldwide, new technological developments are shifting the trend toward alternative energy sources (213). Biomass, wind, and geothermal energy are all renewable sources that are commercially competitive and are making relatively fast progress. Kaygusuz asserts, however, that wind energy is the fastest-growing energy technology in the world (122) and is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate electricity from renewable sources. This literature review demonstrates that wind energy is a clean, affordable, renewable, and abundant domestic source of electricity.
History of Wind Power
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management (BLM), winds are caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the irregularities of the earth's surface, and the rotation of the earth. Wind flow patterns are further modified by terrain, bodies of water, and vegetative cover. This wind flow, or motion energy, can be harvested by modern wind turbines to generate electricity.
The use of wind energy is not a modern phenomenon. Leipoldt explains that the earliest known use of wind power dates to ancient Egypt, some 5,000 years ago, when Egyptians used it to sail boats along the Nile. Around 2000 BC, the first windmill was built in Babylon. In Afghanistan, large windmills — as high as 30 feet, with 16-foot-long blades — were in use by the 10th century BC. Chinese and Persian windmills for grain milling date from at least the 13th century. The Dutch have been using windmill technology since 1390 to pump water; according to Leipoldt, without this technology at least a third of the Netherlands would still be covered by water.
Compared to these varied uses stretching back millennia, converting wind energy to electricity is a recent application (Pasqualetti 24). As Pasqualetti notes, "Although a few people were trying to accomplish this at the same time Thomas Edison opened his coal-fired Pearl Street generating plant in the latter years of the nineteenth century, it would be another 80 years before such proof-of-concept machines would evolve into the commercial generators that started sprouting in the California landscape in 1981" (24).
Works Cited
Bohn, Christiane, and Christopher Lant. "Welcoming the Wind? Determinants of Wind Power Development among U.S. States." Professional Geographer 61.1 (2009): 87–100. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
Demirbas, A. "Global Renewable Energy Projections." Energy Sources Part B: Economics, Planning & Policy 4.2 (2009): 212–224. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
Kaygusuz, K. "Wind Power for a Clean and Sustainable Energy Future." Energy Sources Part B: Economics, Planning & Policy 4.1 (2009): 122–133. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
Leipoldt, Erik. "What Are The Wind Energy Facts On The Renewable Wind Energy Industry?" Alternate Energy Sources.com. (2010). Web. 6 June 2011.
Massachusetts. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Wind Energy Facts. Web. 6 June 2011.
McGowan, Jon G., and Stephen R. Connors. "WINDPOWER: A Turn of the Century Review." Annual Review of Energy & the Environment 25.1 (2000): 147. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
Pasqualetti, Martin J. "Wind Power." Environment 46.7 (2004): 22–38. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
Thresher, Robert, Michael Robinson, and Paul Veers. "The Status and Future of Wind Energy Technology." AIP Conference Proceedings 1044.1 (2008): 340–359. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
United States. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management. Wind Energy Guide. Web. 6 June 2011.
Warren, Charles R., and Richard V. Birnie. "Re-powering Scotland: Wind Farms and the 'Energy or Environment?' Debate." Scottish Geographical Journal 125.2 (2009): 97–126. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 June 2011.
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