The Ferris Files

I am coming to the conclusion that the wind turbines of today — hundreds of feet tall, sporting three blades, clustered in the cornfields like rotary clubs — will soon go the way of the Model T. Good for their day, but we’ve moved on.

I explored alternative designs in wind power for my latest “Innovate” column in Sierra magazine, and can report that 31 flavors of turbines are poised to engulf the plain ol’ vanilla version we know so well. It isn’t that anything’s so wrong with Old Reliable; it’s more that there’s categories of wind that a giant whirligig just can’t use.

The Innovate column I write for Sierra magazine has one shortcoming: The word-count is too small for me to convey the wealth of useful resources I’ve found. Over the last few months, I blogged about the five technologies included in the March/April issue, which focused on what’s known as “Appropriate Technology.”

If there’s one thing I learned from reporting this month’s “Innovate” column, it’s this: The biggest beneficiaries of renewable energy will be the poor, rural farmers of the Third World. The billions of people who live off the grid in Africa, Asia and Latin America will use smaller and humbler technology than we will in the urban, modernized world. Yet its impact will be far greater.

Look on page 69 of this month’s Sierra magazine and you’ll find “Innovate,” a column in which I explore new ideas in energy. I’m excited about this assignment because it lets me roam about at the beginning of our new era, the Renewables Age, and bend down to pick up the shiniest objects.