Wind power is one of the biggest sources of clean energy in the world today. And while wind power has seen steady growth over the years as the technology has advanced, a new proposal might be able to blow away our expectations of just how much power we can generate from our wind.

Blades Bigger Than Two Football Fields?

According to the LA times, a research team that’s drawn members from four universities and two national laboratories is putting its heads together to design the biggest wind turbine we have ever seen. The initial designs, which have been tested in digital simulations, have blades that are 652.2 feet in length, and the towers supporting them 1,574 feet tall… which is a little over a third of a mile in height. Not only that, but the turbines will have two blades each, and the blades will be segmented in such a way as to catch the biggest amount of wind possible.

The term for this design is extreme scale, and it’s certainly an appropriate one.

How Much Power Will These Flower Towers Generate?

The goal of this massive wind turbine is, of course, to generate more power from a single structure. A single one of these huge turbines could generate as much as 50 megawatts of power, which is the size of a small power plant. To put that in perspective, that’s 20 times as much power as the current, average wind turbine.

That seems like a pretty snazzy goal, but the research for one of these titanic towers is just stepping out of the realm of the theoretical, and into the realm of the physical. The team has until 2019 to build a 1/10 scale model of a completed windmill, and to test it, in order to be able to move forward with the project. They’re just now getting started on this proof of concept, but as of this moment everything looks like it’s progressing smoothly. Whether that will continue to be the case, or the project will see an unfortunate wind change, remains to be seen.

The current clean energy climate has taken a lot of shots at coal. Coal-fire power plants have become less popular all over the world, and every nation from India, to China, to the United States is trying to cut down on its use of coal. However, very few nations have taken the crucial step of making a plan to phase-out coal use entirely. In the U.S., where fossil fuels still cast quite a long shadow, the idea of making a law forbidding the use of coal for energy use is bold, to say the least.

Oregon, though, has taken that step, according to IFL Science.

No More Coal After 2035?

As of time of writing, a law has passed through the state’s legislature that would phase out coal use for power generation by the year 2035. The law would also require that at least 50 percent of the state’s power come from renewable resources. At time of writing, the bill is awaiting the governor’s signature to become a law.

That law might not seem like it would have much of an impact, given that Oregon only has a single coal-fired power plant, but it imports a lot of its power from surrounding states as well. Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, as the three states responsible for most of Oregon’s imported, coal-based energy, might see their production from coal take a hit as well. What ripples that will send into other states, and how it will affect those states’ energy policies, remain to be seen.

We’ve heard a lot about the U.S.’s attempts to go green. We know, for example, that the solar power industry has been growing at an increased rate. We also know that renewable energy capacity both locally and across the world is higher than it’s ever been before. However, it’s hard to take all the individual pieces of information, and fit them into a big puzzle. Especially if you’re trying to answer the big question, which is “when will the United States run on renewable energy?”

Sometime around 2030, assuming the numbers from the University of Colorado are accurate.

Will 78 Percent of Our Power Come From Renewables?

One of the biggest problems with green energy has been that it’s intermittent. Sometimes the sun shines brightly, and sometimes the wind blows strong, but sometimes the opposite is true. Given the size of the United States, though, there’s always going to be sun shining, wind blowing, and water flowing. So the key is to install capacity that scales with the weather patterns in the U.S.

What are the benefits, aside from cutting carbon emissions and slowing (or potentially reversing) global warming? Well, by installing enough green energy to meet our needs (or a little over 3/4 of our needs), we would see steadier energy costs which are unaffected by the costs of fossil fuels. We’d see more economic growth, and more jobs in green energy fields. We’d also eliminate our need to import fuels from other countries, making the U.S. self-reliant for its own power needs.

All good goals, and cutting emissions will be the cherry on top. But there’s still a long way to go in the next 14 years, and the decisions we make economically and politically are going to be the ones that determine if we fall short, meet, or surpass the numbers Colorado has laid on the table.

Hawaii has always been the leader in green energy out of necessity, and it recently made the bold claim that it will be using 100 percent renewable energy by the year 2045. Not an easy thing for a state with so much need, but relatively little land for building on. However, one of the wind-based projects Hawaii has decided to fund for reducing its carbon footprint has garnered attention because of its unusual approach to using low-power wind to generate high-powered results.

SheerWind and The Venturi Effect

This is where the story takes an unexpected turn. Hawaii has been giving money to green energy firms who are developing methods of power generation the island state could make good use of. According to Triple Pundit, one of the companies Hawaii gave money to was SheerWind, a Minnesota-based green energy firm. SheerWind is working on an unusual wind turbine that is designed to catch relatively low-powered breezes, and multiply their power.

Here’s how the system works. A 360-degree turbine with a cap sits on top of a funnel. As the turbine spins, the wind is pushed down into the funnel. As the funnel narrows, the pressure increases, and the wind pushes harder. At the narrowest point, when the wind has reached maximum force, it pushes against turbines to create power. Then the wind is diffused, and blown out of the base.

The Venturi effect, the name for the phenomena of how gases or liquids increase in pressure when a pipe narrows, has been used more and more frequently in green energy designs. Whether it will become a standard of future designs remains to be seen, but Hawaii’s government, at least, seems to think it can be used as a way to capture wind that’s too weak for traditional turbines, and to turn it into a steady source of power.

Renewable, clean energy is on the rise in America. We’re building more wind turbines, testing more bio fuels, and installing more solar panels than ever before, and the results are starting to show. There are now states (not many, but some) that have turned off the fossil fuel tap entirely, and who now get all of their power from renewable sources. That’s an achievement that, even a decade ago, would have seemed like a total impossibility. Now, it’s a simple fact of life.

Wherever there’s progress, though, there will be resistance to it. For example, one of the ways rooftop solar panels have remained competitive, and maintained homeowner interest, has been programs that pay homeowners for the power they contribute to the grid. If they produce more than they use, they’re either given a check, or a credit on their account against future power use. This program, popular in states like California where 2/3 of the rooftop solar panels in America are installed, is considered essential to the burgeoning solar movement.

Which is why utilities have tried to have the policy changed.

According to Yahoo! News, though, that change won’t be coming today. The state’s Public Utilities Commission voted in a 3-2 decision to maintain net metering (the technical term for being credited for the energy your solar panels generate). The decision will stand until 2019, by which time it’s very likely that solar panels will have expanded hugely beyond where they are now in California.

Net metering isn’t perfect, and there are some complaints that it puts an unnecessary burden on those who can’t afford solar panels when it comes to infrastructure costs. On the other hand, though, it is a primary driver of continued solar expansion. The 3-2 vote shows that there are frustrations with the policy, but that the good it does outweighs its problems, at least for the time being.

Clean energy, as a topic, was one of the most talked-about things in 2015. From the conference in Paris, to the huge gains in the solar industry both in the U.S. and abroad, everyone seemed focused on going green as quickly and efficiently as possible. And while solar power spent a huge amount of time in the spotlight, wind power was huffing and puffing on its heels, according to Yahoo! News.

We Have 50,000 Wind Turbines?

According to the American Wind Energy Association, there are over 50,000 active wind turbines in the United States. Said turbines have been built over 40 of the 50 states, as well as in Puerto Rico. Not only that, but when taken as a whole, these turbines produce 70 gigawatts of power.

If that sounds like a lot of clean energy, that’s because it is. 70 gigawatts is enough to run about 19 million homes, assuming average power consumption, in the U.S. Not only that, but it’s enough to put wind power up to between 4 and 5 percent of the total power in the United States. If that doesn’t sound like a very big gain, in 2007 wind power barely registered as 1 percent of the energy used in the U.S.

Slow and Steady Wins The Race?

When it comes to clean energy, there’s no silver bullet. Every country, state, and city will need to use the resources it has to hand to generate clean, renewable power. With so much open space across the United States, though, wind and solar are joining hands to create bigger results than either one could manage individually. And as 2016 gets started, those numbers are only going to get bigger.

In the clean energy race, solar power is speeding up by leaps and bounds. Every year the technology grows a little more efficient, and the price drops a little more. Panels used by homeowners now boast roughly 20 percent efficiency, and industrial solar panels can often boast twice that amount. Despite those impressive numbers, and the huge growth the U.S. has seen in solar panel use, solar power still accounted for less than one percent of the power used in the United States in 2014.

“A Little Corner of Nevada, or Utah, Would Power The United States”

This quote came from Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors during a recent speech. While it sounds like hyperbole, meant to illustrate metaphorically that we could handle our energy needs with relative ease if we embraced renewable power on a large enough scale, Eco Watch crunched the numbers. The result? Musk’s estimates were not very far off, particularly considering the amount of sunlight that falls in Nevada and Utah, and the sheer amount of empty miles those states boast.

While there are other challenges, such as transporting the electricity, Musk’s point was well taken; we have the technology to turn off the fossil fuel tap right now. Not only that, but if we were willing to install slightly less than 192,000 square miles of solar fields (roughly the size of Spain), then we could power the entire world. Or, at least, generate the amount of power that was used worldwide.

So what’s stopping us? Nothing at all.