About this item
Wind Energy for the Rest of Us straddles two -- or more -- worlds. The book is about wind energy. It's not just about small wind turbines. It's not just about large wind turbines. It's about the depth and breadth of wind energy, encompassing more than either type of wind turbine. It includes water-pumping windmills and sailing ships. It's a sprawling book, one minute discussing how to install small wind turbines safely, the next explaining how farmers in Indiana can earn millions by installing their own multimegawatt wind turbines. If it's a book hard to categorize, that suits its author, Paul Gipe, who likes to think he's hard to categorize after four decades at the frontiers of renewable energy. His book tells the story of modern wind energy in all its complexity and introduces a North American audience to the trailblazing electricity rebels who have launched a renewable energy revolution in Europe.
About the Author
Paul Gipe is an author, advocate, and analyst of the renewable energy industry. He has written extensively about the subject for the past four decades. Gipe has lectured before groups from Patagonia to Puglia, from Tasmania to Toronto, and from Halifax to Husum. He has spoken to audiences as large as 10,000 and as small as a private presentation for Vice President Al Gore.
Through his web site, Gipe is well known for his frank appraisal of the promise and pitfalls of wind energy, including his stinging critiques of Internet wonders and the hustlers and charlatans who promote them.
Gipe initiated and led the campaign to adapt electricity feed laws to the North American market - the same policy that has stirred a renewable energy revolution in Germany. In his most recent book, Wind Energy for the Rest of Us, he introduces Germany's electricity rebels to a North American audience for the first time. The book, Gipe's seventh on wind energy, debunks novel wind turbines, rebukes revisionist historians, and argues that renewable energy is too important to be left to electric utilities.
In 2004, Gipe served as the acting executive director of the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association where he created, managed, and implemented a provincial campaign for Advanced Renewable Tariffs. The campaign grew into a continent-wide grassroots movement that put renewable energy feed-in tariffs on the political agenda in Canada and the United States.
Gipe first publicly called for a feed law in the United States in his unsuccessful campaign for re-election to the board of directors of the American Wind Energy Association in 1998.
From 1986 to 1994, Gipe represented the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) on the West Coast. He also served on AWEA's board of directors from 1996 to 1998.
From 1987 to 1995, Gipe was the executive director of the Kern Wind Energy Association, a trade association representing companies active in California's Tehachapi Pass.
Gipe has written several books on wind energy, beginning in 1983. His book Wind Energy Basics was translated into Spanish under the title Energía Eólica Práctica (Seville, Spain: Progensa, 2000) and translated into Italian under the title of Elettricità dal Vento (Rome: Franco Muzzio Editore, 2002) . Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, and Business was translated into French under the title Le Grand Livre de l'Éolien (Observ'ER, 2007) . In 1995, his book Wind Energy Comes of Age was selected by the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, for its list of outstanding academic books.
Gipe contributed a chapter to Guide de L'Énergie Éolienne (Paris: Collection Etudes et Filières, 1998) , and co-authored a chapter in Wind Turbine Technology (New York: ASME Press, 1994) . He was the principal contributor to the Izaak Walton League's
