A centuries-old mill gets back to work at last.

When you’re on an urban hike around your own neighborhood, you don’t expect to find a windmill being built in the middle of the road. Holgate Windmill was here before this area of York (England) was smothered in housing. Long before. This humble brick tower is older than the United States of America, and it milled grain into flour for a century and a half before a storm damaged its sails beyond repair and it was shut down for public safety.

Modern housing developers crept into the area, but by joining the ranks of Britain’s Grade II Listed buildings, Holgate Windmill successfully fought them off, forcing the builders to divert around it. Scarred and crumbling, it has stood derelict for 70 years as sign of a technological age we’ll never see again.

The windmill is not only a beautiful piece of historical architecture, it’s also a highly unusual one.

It had five sails, a design by John Smeaton of Eddystone Lighthouse fame. It’s the best choice for maximum efficiency of converting wind power to mechanical energy, yet rarely used because one broken sail could have shut the whole mill down. (Windmills need balanced sails: if the same happened to a four-sail windmill, it could be stripped down to two sails and still keep working). Coupled with the fan projecting backwards off the roof that kept it pointing into the wind at all times, you have a unique piece of engineering.

Because of recent efforts by The Holgate Windmill Preservation Society, this mill is being restored to working order. The walls have been repaired and rendered, the stone floor relaid, the ground floor machinery (above left) cleaned, repaired and reassembled, and locally-sourced materials have been used to replace perished materials including the millstones (below) and the windmill’s colossal upright shaft (above right).

By 2008 the Society had secured £250,000 in grants, prizes and donations – and in winning the People’s Millions award in November 2010, they finally have the money to rebuild the sails.

After decades of neglect, this mill will mill. Using locally produced grain, the Society will provide bakers with specialty flours milled in the traditional way, allowing them to make specialty breads with a 250-year-old heritage. Any profits will be reinvested in the mill so it pays for its upkeep by doing what it does best.

Factor in the educational value of a fully-functioning windmill (the last of York’s 20+ working grain mills), and the tourist-wowing sight of its white sails turning gorgeously against the skyline, and you have something very special indeed.

Images: Mike Sowden; Holgate Windmill Preservation Society

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Q: When is 4.5 percent a lot? A: When it’s up from .11 percent. On the good-news front, that major increase (you do the math, because I just don’t do math) represents an anticipated jump in the number of mobile communications base stations powered by clean energy sources – namely, solar and wind – between today and 2014.

Four-and-a-half percent is also a lot when you consider the ongoing exponential rise in worldwide mobile communications and its required energy-using infrastructure (by the end of 2008 there were an estimated 4.1 billion mobile subscriptions, up from one billion in 2002). These figures, released last week by clean-technology market research firm Pike Research, are particularly important in remote areas, where there’s no (or only cost-prohibitive) access to grid power. In these places, base stations are often powered by dirty diesel generators. This means an even greater increase in clean-powered stations – to an estimated eight percent – in developing countries.

Accelerating the shift to solar and wind power generators, says the New York Times, is increased carbon legislation, price reductions in clean-power technology, and phone companies wanting to reduce high diesel fuel costs. In many cases, new clean-powered base stations in developing countries are using solar/wind hybrid options augmented by emergency backup systems in the form of a fuel cell or a diesel or biomass generator.

Fast Company boils it down: “[It's] an obvious quick and easy score to reducing the impact of a cell phone network: It doesn’t need cabling, no fuel needs to be shipped to the location or even burned in a remote power station. It can also reduce the cost associated with connecting a base station to the larger grid.”

Image: U K

This week, developer Jim Gordon received the news he’s dreamed of hearing for nine long years – Cape Wind is a go. The U.S.’s first offshore coastal waters windfarm, comprising 24 square miles of turbines that promise to offset a hundred million gallons of oil every year, will be situated in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod. Not everyone is delighted at the news (NIMBYs included), and local residents are set for more legal wranglings before building work commences. Nevertheless, the success of the Cape Wind proposal is a milestone in America’s clean energy industry and is sure to catalyze other offshore windfarm projects.

So what will our coastlines look like in a future dominated by coast-hugging wind power? We can catch a glimpse by looking at Denmark’s Horns Rev 2 (91 turbines) or the impressively expansive Robin Rigg windfarm in the Solway Firth off the Scottish coast.

How would you feel about such a view in your backyard?

Further reading:

Offshore wind energy: clean, but anything but cheap – National Geographic.

List of proposed offshore wind projects in North America – OffshoreWind.Net.

Researchers study feasibility of giant deep-ocean wind turbine platforms – Physorg.

Image: phault

Perhaps the luck of the Irish will help make green dreams come true when it comes to the country’s goal to shift away from fossil fuels. Situated at the end of the supply chain and currently 90 percent dependent on imported oil, Ireland hopes to get 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 – far exceeding the EU’s target of 16 percent.

But luck might not be necessary in a nation driven by an urgent need for employment. Ireland sees its financial difficulties and depressed economy not as a hurdle to going green, but a major motivator. Switching to wind power and other renewables would not only provide thousands of jobs, but stabilize dramatic swings in oil and gas prices. Additionally, Ireland’s prospects are looking far sunnier than its trademark misty gray skies.

“We have doubled our renewable energy. We can double it and double it again,” says Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s minister for communications, energy and natural resources. “It is the perfect answer to the recessionary blues.”

Of course, it’s not as simple as throwing up some wind turbines and calling it a day. Just as it is here in America, one of the biggest obstacles is an aging electrical grid – but a grid interconnector directly from Ireland to Britain is currently being built, and with an energy minister who’s devoted to renewables, more improvements are sure to come.

What’s the biggest thing this island nation has going for it? Shoreline, and lots of it. Ireland has enough land and ocean space to provide its own wind power and even have enough to export to other countries. Five offshore wind farm projects are in the pipeline and marine energy is a possibility in the future.

Ireland is looking beyond the estimated $1.33 billion price tag, seeing it as an investment in the future – for both its people and the environment. Perhaps we should sit back and take some notes.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Wind might be a favorite power source of the green energy movement, but winds across the United States appear to be slowing down and global warming may be the culprit.

These are the findings of a new study soon to be  published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The study has found that average and peak wind speeds, especially in the Midwest and the East, have been slowing since 1973. The states most affected are Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kansas, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, northern Maine and western Montana with those bordering the Great Lakes experiencing the greatest wind speed changes.

According to study co-author Eugene Takle, professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University, the trend is showing at least a 10 percent drop over the past decade.

Whether this is a trend is not yet clear. The study’s authors are quick to acknowledge that there are many variables that must be accounted for: changes in wind-measuring instruments over the years, a variety of climate computer models tracking changes, and obstacles such as tree growth and new buildings near wind gauges. All of these factors could affect the study’s results and skew the data.

As a result, the study raises more questions than it answers. But given the growth of wind power as a source of electricity, further research into changing wind speed is important.

Image: pulguita