The North Carolina Department of Commerce recently published a report they commissioned to study our state’s potential role in the United States’ growing wind power industry, which the report authors suggest will invest $140 billion into infrastructure over the next 15 years. The document, which was prepared with assistance from NC State’s Clean Energy Technology Center, mostly provides recommendations to the department for how to capitalize on that investment money. It signals that North Carolina could supply a significant portion of the manufacturing capacity for wind turbine demand both inside and outside the state.
In addition to the economic gains from taking the lead in an emerging industry, North Carolina could facilitate its own commitment to reducing carbon emissions by lowering the cost of wind power locally and improving its reliability. The state government should take note of this report and act decisively to ensure this industry can flourish in an equitable way.
Our state already boasts strong manufacturing capabilities, with a higher manufacturing gross domestic product than any other East Coast state, which implies that our economy could readily handle expansion of turbine production. That said, existing capacity won’t automatically draw in new companies on its own, so the state should strongly consider providing subsidies to turbine manufacturers. Not only would this further cheapen the cost of turbines and make them more cost-competitive against fossil fuels, it could enable the state to encourage factories to be constructed in disadvantaged communities where their economic potential would be most useful.
North Carolina could also help its own cause by simply planning more wind energy development. While our state remains a solar powerhouse, outpacing every state but sunny California in terms of total generation, wind power hasn’t kept up: Our first and only wind farm was constructed in 2016. Many wind projects were also delayed by an 18-month moratorium which expired in 2019. One large offshore wind site, the Kitty Hawk project, is currently planned for development, but encouraging more such projects would provide key demand for wind turbine suppliers, while also speeding our transition away from coal and other fossil fuels.
Supplying wind projects inside and outside our state could provide the extra but crucial benefit of improving the reliability of our renewable power generation. A 2018 study investigated how solar and wind availability across the United States could increase their reliability — the capacity for wind and solar power generation to meet demand at any given time. Among their key findings, the authors report that wind energy particularly benefits when power sources are linked over a large area. That is to say, when North Carolina and Virginia’s energy grids are linked (as they are), it can be windy up in Virginia when it isn’t in our state, or vice versa, and that makes both states’ energy production more reliable over time.
A common complaint about renewable energy is that its variable nature makes it unsuitable to deliver a large amount of our electricity. In reality, this paper found that wind and solar together could in principle achieve up to 80% of our electricity demand even without large amounts of energy storage capacity. While that remaining 20% proves more troublesome, our electricity mix is currently far, far off from that point, so any additional green resources we can get online would pose little obstacle to energy reliability.
Our country and our state urgently need to ramp up our clean energy infrastructure, and North Carolina has the chance to facilitate that conversion well beyond our borders. We should aim to lead our neighbors in wind energy, and our government has the opportunity to act in all of our best interests by promoting this industry within our state.
