Upper Wind Compared to all other Renewable Energy Sources

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Airborne Wind Energy (AWE), aka Kite Energy, opens up a vast new source of renewable energy, Upper Wind, a spatially, qualitatively distinct resource from Surface Wind few even think about. Its a far larger, denser, and more consistent resource. AWE technology is a branch of aviation, rather than hardware bolted atop a pole. Its not purely hypothetical. Airborne species have used tailwinds to thrive for over a hundred million years, and jet transport reduces fuel use considerably the same way. Already, kite sports flourish, rapidly supplanting fuel intensive activities like water-skiing and snow-skiing. How far could energy kites take us?

Solar and Conventional Wind Energy are roughly equivalent resources, as macroeconomic performance metrics show. One or the other may be favored at any given time or place, with no overall dominance of one or the other. They have comparable deployment limits in terms of capital cost and area use. Hydro-energy from all sources has similar economic performance limits as Solar and Surface Wind. Solar, (surface) Wind, and Hydro are roughly equivalent, and taken together are not quite enough to power civilization at its desired level of prosperity without severe inroads on habitats and terrible impacts on ecosystems. It may be these are inherently not enough to reverse a catastrophic slide into a mass-extinction outcome (Biomass can be disregarded as a primary renewable energy solution, due to grave trade-offs).

The Upper Wind Energy Resource is most easily compared to Surface Wind, the basis of Conventional Wind Energy. Up to about 10km high, kinetic energy increases faster than pressure-density deceases. By comparison, surface wind, solar, and hydro are mostly two-dimensional resources crowding the same space that ecosystems and civilizations require. Wind towers, mean global terrain elevation, and ocean currents all average around 200m in effective vertical extent. Solar has an advantage of thinness, and perhaps most south-facing roofs should be solar energy surface. Airborne Wind Energy is also inherently thin-surfaced, with a more vertical orientation than solar, but with far less surface footprint required. On a practical spatial basis, AWE looks to be an overwhelmingly superior renewable energy technology.

Geophysical estimates put total potential Upper Wind Energy >100 times what surface turbines can access. ~2% of this energy could completely power civilization at current levels. In fact, global warming has pumped excess energy into Wind, an energy bonus in effect under the seat cushions. AWE challenges are enormous, but the rewards even more so- even the very survival of humanity and Mother Nature. We may even become an airborne civilization in a new Golden Age, techno-utopians living in the sky (Aerotecture). Our we may go extinct, simply because we failed to mobilize AWE in time. Either way, its quite exciting.

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