|
|
 |
|||
                          |
 |
 |
BLOWING IN THE WIND The global wind-power industry, already a $2 billion-a-year business, is growing by 25% annually. Two decades of research have yielded a thoroughly modern wind turbine with tough fiberglass blades and electronic controls. The cost of the electricity produced is comparable with that of fossil-fuel power and still plunging. Already thousands of wind turbines have been installed in a dozen European countries. Some developers are turning to the shallow North Sea, whose winds could one day meet a sizable fraction of Europe's power needs. The boom is also being felt in Asia, where wind-power companies are setting up successful joint ventures that are installing large numbers of turbines in India, China and other developing countries. NO SMOKE IN YOUR EYES A small Canadian company named Ballard Power Systems is commercializing a device called a fuel cell. It cleanly and quietly combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity--and the only waste is water. Small, mass-produced and containing no moving parts, fuel cells are a product of the U.S. space program, where they are used to meet the electricity needs of the shuttle fleet. Fuel cells could one day sit in millions of basements producing power and hot water, without fossil fuels. They could also replace the internal combustion engines that now power most motor vehicles. Clean energy is not just a long-shot investment option for venture capitalists. In the past two years Enron, one of the biggest energy conglomerates in the world, bought Zond, the leading wind-power company in the U.S., and a major interest in Solarex, the country's second largest solar-cell manufacturer. With these acquisitions Enron is pursuing renewable energy projects from the U.S. Great Plains to the deserts in Rajasthan, India. Other major firms are moving as well. In late 1995 Bechtel Enterprises, once a leading builder of nuclear power plants, and PacifiCorp, a giant utility that operates coal-fired generators in the northwestern U.S., announced that they were teaming up to form a joint venture called EnergyWorks to invest in solar power and other "human-scale energy systems." Japan's Tomen, a major trading company, unveiled plans last May to invest $1.2 billion installing 1,000 wind turbines in Europe during the next five years. Even such oil-industry mainstays as British Petroleum and Shell are diversifying into renewable energy. |