Can renewables meet demand?
There’s enough renewable energy to meet energy demand, Wellinghoff said. “There’s 500 to 700 gigawatts of developable wind throughout the Midwest, all the way to Texas . There’s probably another 200 to 300 gigawatts in Montana and Wyoming that can go West.” He also cited tremendous solar power in the Southwest and hydrokinetic and biomass energy, and said the United States can reduce energy usage by 50 percent. “You combine all those things together … I think we have great resources in this country, and we just need to start using them,” he said. Problems with unsteady power generation from wind will be overcome, he said. “That’s exactly what all the load response will do, the load response will provide that leveling ability, number one,” he said. “Number two, if you have wide interconnections across the entire interconnect, you’re going to have a lot of diversity with that wind. Not all the wind is going to stop at once. You’ll have some of it stop, some of it start, and all of that
