Nobel Prize winner: Don’t rely on wind technology

When Europe runs out of fossil fuels in 40 to 60 years, wind energy is inefficient and too unstable to deliver the energy needed. Therefore it is deeply abortive when countries like Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom rely on wind technology, says Jack Steinberger, German-American physicist and former Nobel Prize winner, in an interview with Berlingske Tidende.




Steinberger is one of the keynote speakers at the Nordic Climate Solutions Conference that opens today in Copenhagen. In definite terms, he criticizes Denmark and other European countries for heavily investing in wind power instead of solar power.



“It is only windy enough 40 to 45 percent of the time. Often, you will not be able to satisfy European energy needs using wind. In the desert, the sun is shining perhaps 95 percent of the time, which of course is much more stable,” Jack Steinberger argues, according to Berlingske Tidende.



According to Jack Steinberger, it is still not possible to store wind energy in a sustainable way, and that is an almost insuperable obstacle.



Today at the conference, architects with Gottlieb Paludan will present a way of storing wind power by using a hydrothermal technique, Berlingske Tidende reports.



In short, the Danish architects suggest the building of small, artificial islands. The largest part of each island will consist of a water basin that can be emptied by pumps powered by the wind energy produced at night. On windless days, seawater will be channeled back into the basin through turbines, thus generating power.