Learn more in ACP’s Green Hydrogen Deployment Brief.

Some key takeaways include:

• The Western North Atlantic Ocean where the North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) occurs is a highly dynamic physical environment consisting of three main oceanographic regions, each with a distinct oceanography: the Gulf of Maine, Mid- Atlantic Bight, and South Atlantic Bight.
• Recent shifts in NARW distribution and foraging habitat utilization within the Western North Atlantic have been observed and are believed to be associated with shifts in copepod prey distributions caused by warming sea surface temperatures related to climate change.
• Local or regional scale fragmentation of copepod aggregations has been observed and is projected to continue with subsequent declines in copepod abundance under future climate scenarios.
• Current foraging habitats may not support sufficient prey populations to allow growth of the NARW population based on the relatively low reproductive rate presently observed for NARW. As waters continue to warm due to climate change, current foraging areas may once again be abandoned as NARWs continue to shift their distribution in search of prey.
• Offshore wind farms can impact hydrodynamics in the surrounding ocean in two principal ways: 1) through an atmospheric wake effect that reduces wind speeds behind wind turbines that can reach the ocean surface, reducing surface wind stress and wind-induced currents, and 2) through subsurface mixing induced by the presence of the turbine substructure within the water column.
• Hydrodynamics and wind wake effects around offshore wind turbines are driven by physical ocean processes including tides, stratification, water depth, and wind-driven currents; and atmospheric processes such as turbulence and stability, all of which have significant natural variation.

Read the report to learn more.

These benefits include reducing the cost of producing electricity, protecting consumers from increases in the price of other fuels, and reducing public health costs by eliminating harmful pollution.

By protecting against electricity and fuel price increases and reducing the need to operate the most expensive power plants, wind energy provides Texas consumers with $1.2 billion per year in gross benefits.

These benefits are in addition to the thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic development wind energy brings to Texas.

This report explores the benefits of wind power both on Texas consumers, and the Texas community – plus a look at wind’s benefits on an hourly basis.

By protecting against electricity and fuel price increases and reducing the need to operate the most expensive power plants, wind energy provides the region’s consumers with $1.2 billion per year in gross benefits.

These benefits are in addition to the thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic development wind energy brings to the SPP region.

This report outlines societal and consumer benefits of wind energy on the SPP, as well as provides an hourly look at wind benefits.

Wind energy is a widely available, affordable, and reliable electric generation method for significantly reducing air pollution. As detailed in this whitepaper, wind energy plays a significant role in reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) in nearly every state. And wind energy can play an even greater role in reducing emissions reductions going forward, with evidence from more than a dozen utility and independent grid operator studies confirming that wind can reliably provide an even larger share of our electricity needs, in turn producing even larger emissions reductions.

Key findings include:

• The 167.7 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of wind energy produced in the U.S. in 2013 reduced CO2 emissions by 126.8 million tons, the equivalent of reducing power sector emissions by more than 5 percent, or taking 20 million cars off the road.
• The top 10 states by volume of carbon reductions from wind energy are: Texas, Illinois, California, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Wyoming.
• States achieving a reduction in carbon emissions of 10 percent or more from wind energy alone include California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington State, with Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Wyoming coming in just under 10%.
• One MWh of wind energy avoids .75 tons, or 1,500 pounds, of carbon dioxide emissions on average. A typical 2 MW wind turbine avoids around 4,000-4,500 tons of carbon emissions annually, equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of more than 700 cars.

This report details how wind energy improves electric reliability and protects consumers from energy price spikes, particularly when the electric grid is stressed, explaining key consumer benefits of wind energy:

1. Wind reduces the cost of producing electricity
2. Wind energy protects consumers by reducing the impact of electricity price spikes
3. Wind energy reduces pollution
4. Wind energy hedges against fuel price volatility
5. Fixed-price wind energy becomes an even better deal as other fuels increase in price over time
6. Wind reduces consumer natural gas prices

Some of the most common questions about wind energy focus on how it can be reliably integrated into the power system. This report answers the most frequently asked questions, with lessons learned from grid operators’ experiences reliably integrating large amounts of wind.

Whitepaper topics:

1. How much wind energy is on the power system now?
2. How do grid operators accommodate such large amounts of wind energy?
3. How much does it cost integrate wind?
4. How much more wind energy can we reliably integrate?
5. Don’t grid operators need to add backup to integrate wind?
6. What happens wen the wind doesn’t blow?
7. Don’t we need baseload power?
8. hat about the reliability services provided by conventional generation?
9. What has been Europe’s experience with renewable energy?
10. What is needed to reliably accommodate higher levels of wind?
11. Isn’t energy storage necessary to integrate wind?
12. Why is some wind power curtailed? How does time of production affect the value of wind energy?
13. How does the renewable energy Production Tax Credit affect electricity markets and reliability?
14. What is wind’s net impact on emissions?
15. Can wind reliably reach the level of output EPA assumed in its Clean Power Plan?

Concise answers are provided in the executive summary, with citations and supporting analysis included in the full report.