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Wendy Williams
 
 
   
 
 
The Winds of Change: Meeting Tomorrow’s Clean Energy Challenge

In the summer of 2001, Cape Wind Associates set out to build America's first off-shore wind farm in Nantucket Sound, just south of Cape Cod. The company realized that some people might object, but never in its wildest dreams did it imagine the uproar that would occur.

In her riveting book, Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future, (2007, PublicAffairs), award-winning science writer Wendy Williams (along with co-author Robert Whitcomb) chronicles the epic, true-life battle on Cape Cod between the forces of privilege and the common good. Williams was there from the beginning, watching as local opposition to Cape Wind exploded quickly into a full-blown attempt to stop the development of wind power throughout the United States. Cape Wind was named one of the year’s ten best environmental books by Booklist and one of the year’s best science and technology books by Library Journal.

Williams' journey took her across the Atlantic to Denmark to interview people who had lived with wind power for years, into coal mines in Pennsylvania, into the interior of modern wind turbines to learn how the power of the wind is translated into electrical power, and to sites around the nation where inventors and scientists are working to create America’s emerging energy future.

In her multimedia lecture, Williams shows audiences that a clean-energy future is within their grasp, if only they demand it. She asserts that there is no such thing as an "energy shortage." In fact, E=MC2 tells us that at its most profound level the universe consists of nothing but energy. As the Cape Wind story shows, our problem is not energy – but political determination. Once grassroots America insists on change, technological innovation will follow.

Williams discusses the behind-the-scenes details of how the Cape Wind project, nearly killed by midnight-hour political manipulation in the halls of Congress, was saved by the united grassroots efforts of individuals and organizations spread across America.

She also explains the far-reaching effects of the 30-year wind power revolution. Because of that success, exciting new technology is already in the pipeline: In Spain, one company has already captured the energy of ocean waves and turned it into electric power; In Massachusetts, scientist Derek Lovley has found an unusual microbe that can produce electricity that's already powering light bulbs and laptops. And around the nation, inventors and scientists are developing innovative battery technology that will create low-cost ways to store electric power generated by rays from the sun.

Williams has written for many major publications, including The New York Times, Scientific American, Science, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, the Providence Journal, and the Baltimore Sun. She has been journalist-in-residence at Duke University and at the Hastings Center, a fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado and at the Marine Biological Laboratory.