On the same day last week, two groups of entrepreneurs, manufacturers and environmentalists who are alarmed at the worst oil spill in US history sent petitions to President Barack Obama stating that his administration should get on with the proposed climate change bill as a first step in helping America become a low-carbon economic power.

“The United States has an opportunity to lower greenhouse gas emissions and become the world’s leader in a burgeoning clean energy economy,” said a letter to the White House from 60 major corporations, including DuPont, Ford Motor Company and PepsiCo. “We face a critical moment that will determine whether we will be able to unleash homegrown American innovation or remain stuck in the economic status quo.”

A second petition also noted the need for new renewable energies.

“Your administration and Congress should commit the nation to a path that ends our dependence on oil,” said the petition, which was signed by 23 organisations, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Sierra Club. “You should immediately put policies in place to dramatically cut our oil use. Most urgently, you should speed the transition to a clean energy economy by enacting comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation that creates jobs, makes America energy independent, and reduces global warming pollution.”

As the two petitions indicate, the appalling environmental catastrophe that continues to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico can provide the US the opportunity to finally substitute its costly and unhealthy addiction to oil with an innovative energy revolution that taps into the power of wind energy and other renewables.

Such a transformation is badly needed for the world’s largest economy and the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses caused by burning fossil fuels.

This realization is highlighted by the unwelcome news that it may now take until August to fully curtail the massive pollution caused by BP’s offshore oil drilling.

In addition to severely restricting important and lucrative Gulf fisheries, destroying marshes and beaches used by birds and other animals, the plumes of toxic oil are sure to sharply curtail a vibrant tourism industry. Simply put, the shorelines in at least four American states may never be the same again.

A disaster of this scale is a wake-up call to US lawmakers slow to change the way the nation produces and uses energy. Even those stubbornly refusing to budge from the destructive business-as-usual scenarios must now admit that oil has met its end game.

In comparison to the worsening nightmare now being played out on US coastal shores, emissions-free wind power continues to show it is at the forefront of a new green revolution for a growing, and electricity-hungry, world.

GWEC

As BP continues to search for ways to plug the leak that occurred three weeks ago at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico spilling more than three million gallons of crude oil into the ocean, it is becoming more and more clear that the world needs alternative solutions.

Offshore wind power can provide part of the answer to the dilemma of reducing our dependence on finite and polluting fossil fuels. In Europe alone the winds blowing across the seas are an abundant energy source which can be transformed into green electricity that does not emit CO₂, and will reduce Europe’s growing dependence on imported fossil fuels, creating thousands of sustainable jobs in the process.

There are currently 830 offshore wind turbines now installed and connected to the grid, totalling 2,063 MW in 39 wind farms in nine European countries. Some 17 offshore wind farms are under construction in Europe, totalling more than 3,500 MW, with just under half being constructed in UK waters. In addition, a further 52 offshore wind farms have won full consent in European waters, totalling more than 16,000 MW, with just over half of this capacity planned in Germany. And the growth rates are impressive: In 2009, the market grew by 54% compared to 2008. In 2010 the market grew by an even more considerable 75% compared to the previous year.

EWEA has a target of reaching 230 GW of wind power by 2020 which will include 40 GW of offshore power. This is a challenging but very feasible goal. By 2030, just ten years later, we envisage some 150 GW of offshore wind power.

If all offshore wind projects in their various stages of planning are added up, there are already some 100 GW of offshore wind projects in addition to existing farms. If these become fully functioning wind farms, they would produce 10% of the EU’s electricity while also avoiding 200 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year.

Europe must now use the coming decade to prepare for the large-scale exploitation of its biggest indigenous energy resource – offshore wind – overcoming the seemingly significant obstacles – including underwater electricity grids and cables, building the harbours and barges capable of facilitating the installation of offshore wind farms – in the path of its development.

As the US and China are already beginning to show, Europe’s success in offshore wind power can then be repeated the world over.

Just days after the unfolding oil-related environmental disaster started in the Gulf of Mexico, a number of Democratic lawmakers began lobbying the US government to quickly get involved in approving an offshore wind farm industry.

“Fossil fuels are just not sustainable over the long run for all sorts of reasons,” Rush Holt, a representative from New Jersey, was quoted as saying by AFP.

Holt and three other New Jersey lawmakers were responding to BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill which started after an April 20 explosion killed 11 oil workers,  unleashing at least 200,000 gallons of oil a day into ocean waters now drifting towards Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Some analysts are saying the Gulf spill — which occurred just weeks after President Barack Obama said he was expanding offshore oil drilling — has the potential of becoming the worst oil disaster in US history and a far greater ecological nightmare that the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that dumped 11 million gallons of crude off Alaska’s shores in 1989.

At a press conference, Holt and the other lawmakers said developing an offshore wind industry can be a viable alternative to drilling for oil in the ocean. “The wind resources are really quite large and over time are much larger than oil resources,” AFP quoted him saying, adding offshore wind power could supply “more than half of the electricity need of the eastern United States.”

Putting the looming disaster into perspective, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted Monday that “the gulf blowout is a pointed reminder that the environment won’t take care of itself, that unless carefully watched and regulated, modern technology and industry can all too easily inflict horrific damage on the planet.”

An article in the Observer noted that another oil company, Shell, has noted a steady increase in both hazardous waste and non-hazardous waste. Moreover, the article says that Shell is using a quarter more energy to find and produce each barrel of oil than it did a decade ago.