Egypt and Wind Turbines

Feb 7, 2011

What is the connection between the current civil unrest in Egypt and wind turbines? The first and most obvious is that Egypt has a good wind resource along the Gulf of Suez and instability threatens the efforts of Egyptian business to develop that resource.

The less obvious connection, which is very much on my mind today, is that renewable energy in the United States could free us to support the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people. We could stop walking a foreign policy tight rope between our democratic principles and our fear of losing access to Saudi Arabian oil.

The United States has vast energy resources that do not have to be imported. Our offshore wind resource alone is four times the capacity of our whole grid and it is located near the greatest demand on the east and west coats and in the Great Lake states. We also have significant resources of shale gas in the United States. Even though the method for producing that gas – “fracking” – poses environmental problems, those problems have to be compared to the environmental and military costs of producing and transporting Middle Eastern oil to meet the same demand.

On Thursday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce will hold hearings on “The Impact of Middle East Events on U. S. Energy Markets.” I want to hear what the witnesses and committee members have to say, but, based on the title, I have a bad feeling that I will not hear any thoughtful or creative responses the current civil unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Jordan.

I fear I will hear committee members who do not know or recognize the differences among Middle Eastern countries. I fear I will hear the Middle East described as a monolithic region with only one important dimension: it is a source of oil for the United States. I assume there will be committee members who jump to the conclusion that unrest in the Middle East is a threat United States’ interests and that the democratic aspirations of Egyptians, Yemenis, Jordanians and Tunisians will have to take a back seat to America’s need for oil from Saudi Arabia.

I crave a creative response to events in Egypt. I want someone to point out that our military expenditures in the Middle East are in fact an oil subsidy. A small fraction of that amount could help off-shore wind scale up and become a large fraction of our energy supply as well as pay for significant humanitarian aid in the Middle East. Maybe we could help the Egyptians scale up their wind resource as well. I would love to hear a frank recognition of the powerful connections among peace, social justice, energy and the environment. We cannot be true to our best democratic values, we cannot promote peace until we have a sane energy system based on renewable energy.

For decades we have been talking about the need to “end our dependence on foreign oil.” And for decades we have not been doing anything serious about it. Maybe an oil price shock is just what we need to finally push us into a low carbon economy.