Despite the tough economic times we’re living in, wind power continues to expand around the globe. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the worldwide wind power capacity grew by 31% last year, adding 37.5 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy to the global mix. This just points out all the more clearly that it ain't just the answer to our climate woes that is blowing in the wind.


Spain's Maranchon Wind Farm is the largest in Europe with 104 generators, and is operated by Iberdrola, the largest wind energy company in the world. © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

As we continue to search for ways to foster an economic recovery, the incredible growth of wind power capacity around the world shows that wind energy is not just the right choice for saving the climate, but also for creating jobs and putting folks back to work.

The American Wind Energy Association reports that the US didn't do too shabby itself, installing a record-breaking 10,000 megawatts (MW), or 10 GW, of new wind power capacity in 2009. This brings total wind capacity in the US up to 35 GW. But according to the GWEC, China contributed a third of the global wind power expansion last year, marking the fifth straight year in which the country at least doubled its capacity for generating power from the wind. China is now producing more than 25 GW of power from the wind, up from just over 12 GW the year before. Kinda puts our 10 GW increase into perspective. For a country that prides itself on innovation and forward-thinking, the US can and should do better.

Here we are in America still fighting for our first large-scale offshore wind project, Cape Wind. If you haven’t already, sign our petition calling on Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to approve Cape Wind and help get us on the path to a clean, green future.

But even if we were to go all in for wind power tomorrow, how would we get that clean energy from the point of production to the point of consumption? Glad you asked! It just so happens we have just released a report describing how global electricity grids can sustain high levels of renewable energy. The report is called Renewables 24/7, click that link and you can download the whole thing as a PDF.

Hard as it is to believe, Cape Wind still faces an uncertain future.

But Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has said he will decide whether or not the project goes forward by February 12th — and he wants all of us to weigh in. You can sign our petition calling on Secretary Salazar to approve the project and show your support for Cape Wind right now. We'll send our petition with all of your signatures (over 12,000 so far — let's hit 15,000!) over to the Department of the Interior.

In case you don't already know all of this by heart, here's why you should support Cape Wind: The offshore wind project would be great for Massachusetts. Its 130 wind turbines would generate up to 420 megawatts of clean, green electricity – enough to replace the current power plant, which burns oil. This would reduce the region’s greenhouse gas emissions by 734,000 tons per year, which by some estimates is equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road.

Cape Wind would also be great for the United States of America. As the only offshore wind farm likely to be approved and built during President Obama’s first term, the completion of Cape Wind would go a long way toward showing the world that we're serious about cleaning up our act and converting to a clean energy economy. America needs to lead the world in solving global warming, and projects like Cape Wind are exactly how we can begin to do that.

The most recent snag is the concerns about the historic and cultural value of Nantucket Sound. These concerns obviously need to be properly addressed, and it seems like they can be met while still allowing this vital clean energy project to move forward. Because the thing is, the impacts of unchecked global warming — including sea level rise that would all but erase the region’s current coastline — are the far greater threat not just to Cape Cod but to the entire world. Building this first-of-its-kind wind farm in the US will be an important step towards tackling the climate crisis we’re facing right now and saving Cape Cod.

So please take a minute and sign our petition to Secretary Salazar and let him know that you support clean energy and Cape Wind. When you're done doing that, there's a link directly to a form on the Department of the Interior's website where you can submit a personal comment (or go here).

The announcement of Apple's new iPad, made today by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at an event right here in San Francisco, included a report on the tablet device's environmental stats: Happily, the iPad will be free of PVCs, BFRs, arsenic and mercury. It's very exciting to see that Apple is continuing its industry-leading policy of eliminating toxic chemicals from its products, once again proving that these dangerous substances don't belong in our electronics.

But while Jobs also made the claim that Apple is the industry leader in mobile technologies, he didn’t mention that mobile devices are growing increasingly dependent on cloud computing power, or the fact that the energy powering the cloud can have a big impact on the green cred of mobile devices like the iPad.

In case you’re not familiar with the term, “cloud computing” refers to devices that have little or no processing power and storage of their own, but instead connect to the internet and run web-based applications and access media stored on web servers (as opposed to applications and media stored on your computer's hard drive). Google Docs and Gmail, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube – these are all part of “the cloud.”

While the rise of cloud computing means we get lots of cool new toys – more powerful smart phones and other high-tech gadgets like the iPad – data storage and cloud computing power are the single largest driver of new electricity demand worldwide. We launched our Cool IT Challenge precisely because tech companies have a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions, not just in the sense that they're responsible for emitting lots of greenhouse gases but also because they have the potential to play a big part in solutions to climate change.

You can see how all the consumer electronics stack up against each other in terms of green cred on our latest Guide to Greener Electronics.

As a leader in mobile technology, Apple now joins the ranks of big data center users like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and IBM. These companies are building data centers around the globe at alarming rates, and where they choose to build these new data centers can have a huge impact on important decisions about energy policy. For example, we're seeing Google and Apple build data centers in places in the US where there are fights over coal power expansion, and their data centers are being used as justification by politicians and utilities to expand dirty energy power stations.

It's great that the iPad is green. Now Apple and other players in the cloud computing sector must be aggressive advocates for renewable energy to ensure that the cloud powering their products is itself fueled by clean, green energy, not the dirty fuels of the past.

We don't want our fancy new green iPads to be connected to a brown cloud.

Image credit: Gizmodo (via Flickr)

Ensuring polluter profits are safe from pesky environmental regulations sure is hard work. Just ask Senator Lisa Murkowski, who had to have polluter lobbyists and former Bush administration officials Jeff Holmstead and Roger Martella help write the Dirty Air Act, which she introduced yesterday in an attempt to block the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Greenpeace activist and “PolluterWatch TV” correspondent Aliya Haq thought that Murkowski and her polluter lobbyist allies might be too busy devising new ways to gut the Clean Air Act and protect pulluter profits to properly thank one another for the roles they each played in getting the Dirty Air Act introduced on the Senate floor yesterday. So she dropped by their offices with flowers and cards:

There’s more about Murkowski’s working relationship with big polluter lobbyists, and the $50,000 she had their clients donate to her campaign fund even while Martella and Holmstead were helping write her legislation, over on PolluterWatch.

 

Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski is switching tactics in her attempts to gut the Clean Air Act on behalf of big polluters. Her amendment to strip the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act caused an uproar when it was revealed that two polluter lobbyists had helped write it. Now Murkowski has introduced a resolution to roll back the EPA's endangerment finding altogether, and she has the support of 35 other Republicans – as well as three Democrats.

Murkowski offered a “resolution of disapproval” yesterday that, if passed, would essentially be a Congressional veto of the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, which was a necessary first step before the agency could begin to regulate those emissions. The Murkowski amendment would have stripped that regulatory capability from the EPA, and per the Senate's rules would have required 60 votes to pass. The resolution, on the other hand, only requires 51 votes.

The "resolution of disapproval" Murkowski has now introduced may be a different tactic, but it’s just another attempt by the Senator and her polluter lobbyist pals to gut the Clean Air Act and let King Coal and Big Oil off the hook.

The three Democratic Senators who have supported the resolution Murkowski offered on behalf of big polluters – Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska – have all taken substantial campaign donations from the same polluter lobbyists who helped write the Murkowski amendment and their clients, as we detailed in a report issued earlier this week.

As you can see from these latest developments, it’s extremely important that we keep reminding our Senators that they were elected to represent us, not big polluters. Take action right now to tell your Senators that you expect them to protect your health and wellbeing, not the profits of polluters.