David Grunfeld / The Times-Picayune. Members of the Louisiana National Guard place boom on the beaches at Grand Isle, Wednesday May 26, 2010.

In the midst of all the bad, there is some good news about renewable energy — specifically wind energy. There is also good news about transportation, because 2010 is the year that the EV (electric vehicle) is going to make an appearance, again, on public roads.   It seems like every car company  is developing an electric car.  CleanTechnica reports that:

If the Western US generated 30% of its electricity with wind power, costs would drop 40%, the NREL reveals in The Western Wind and Solar Integration Study. Under various integration scenarios exhaustively considered in great detail in a “what-if” and “how-to” analysis for the WestConnect group of utilities, there would also be a reduction  in carbon dioxide emissions of at least 25% and as much as 45%.

The study comes at a welcome time, because this is the year that electric cars are finally poised to appear on the US market, creating a real alternative to the oil-powered commute, since EVs could be charged with clean energy like solar and wind power, and the gulf disaster shows us clearly what the alternative is. . . . .

The NREL published a corresponding study for the Eastern states in January. A related update of overall wind power potential by the NREL found that the US could produce 37 million Gigawatt-hours of electricity from wind every year, far more than currently required (only 3 million Gigawatt-hours annually).

We have been told by scientists and policy makers that renewable sources of energy just can not provide all the power we will need in the future.  Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not.  What we have learned in the last 3 weeks is that hearing numbers and pronouncements from the government, or from certain groups, are not necessarily accurate.  When we are told that baseload electricity from wind and solar is just never going to happen because the gigawatts aren’t there, those assertions should be considered challenges, not the final word on what is possible.

The other major thing we have learned in the last 3 weeks is that oil has to replaced.  It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico, it’s also the immense wasteland that is being created in Canada from the bitumen of the tar sands.

The Alberta clipper oil pipeline and others are going to carry the world’s dirtiest foreign oil through the upper U.S. and down to refineries in the midwest.  This is the world’s worst oil, the most toxic and polluting, the most carcinogenic, and the most damaging to wildlife  (until the Gulf catastrophe came along) of all oil,  and companies are investing heavily in it.  Even T. Boone Pickens and oil companies [...]