Dec 3 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Rod Walton Tulsa World, Okla.

Wind energy makes economic sense locally, environmental sense nationally and security sense globally, proponents said Wednesday.

Speakers at Revolution: Oklahoma Wind Energy Conference, ranging from former CIA Director James Woolsey to former Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode, touted the potential benefits of expanding not just the use of wind turbines, but also domestically abundant energies across the board.

The conference continues through Thursday at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

Bode, the president and CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, in Washington, said that increasing the wind generation potential in Oklahoma makes the most sense because the western part of the state has such a steady supply. Building wind turbines and installing transmission lines promotes sustainable economic development and keeps pace with neighboring states, which are going full-throttle on wind energy, she said.

"It's a no-brainer," she said.

Oklahoma has developed about 830 megawatts of installed wind capacity, ranking it 10th in the country. The state, however, is not among the 29 that have adopted renewable energy standards, Bode noted.

Woolsey, a Tulsa native who ran the CIA for nearly two years in the Clinton administration, said wind power fits perfectly into an electrical generation mix that should include solar energy and additional natural gas-fired facilities. Quantum leaps in battery technology should eventually help

in using that electrical generation to power more of the country's vehicles, he added.

This is important because the top 22 countries that generate at least two-thirds of their economy from oil production are either dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms, Woolsey said. Heading that group is Saudi Arabia, a kingdom that funds hatred of non-Muslims through various schools, he said.

Woolsey, who is now a venture capitalist and a member of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, believes that natural gas, wind, solar and battery technology are weapons in a much-needed war to reduce dependency on oil. He hopes that oil eventually will be like salt, once a desperately coveted commodity that sparked territorial battles. Electrical power, particularly when used to freeze meat, made salt far less valuable and volatile, he noted.

"Salt was destroyed as a strategic commodity," Woolsey said. "Nobody goes to war over salt mines anymore. We need to do that to oil."

Stuart Solomon, the chief operating officer of AEP-PSO, outlined its commitment to wind power. American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma does not build wind farms, instead it purchases power from other producers and distributes it to customers.

AEP-PSO began receiving 99 megawatts in installed wind potential last month from the Blue Canyon V farm north of Lawton. The utility buys that power from Horizon Wind Energy.

Altogether AEP-PSO has slightly less than 500 megawatts in total installed capacity, reports show. Solomon said the utility's generation mix sometime next year should be 44 percent natural gas-fired power, 44 percent coal and 12 percent wind.

"We've got a great resource here; it's only natural we take advantage of it," he said. "It's a great fuel hedge and a great environmental hedge."

Companies that harness wind, however, must find ways to make it work practically and economically, he warned. Relying on natural gas-power turbines, which can ramp up and down quickly, creates a balance with wind energy, he said.

A vibrant wind-power economy needs state-of-the-art forecasting to maintain grid efficiency and perhaps the move toward "day-ahead markets" that would allow pricing on supply-and-demand factors, Solomon said.

"It's a new challenge for us," he said.

The conference also included discussions about the threats to some endangered species from wind turbines and how to train the state's work force for the new construction demands.

Thursday will feature discussions on a potential expanded transmission grid and a Sooner Survey poll that showed 71 percent of Oklahomans are willing to pay more to use wind power.

Rod Walton 581-8457 rod.walton@tulsaworld.com

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