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, receiving numerous awards for his efforts. 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. 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. He 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.
Latest Articles by Paul Gipe
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Paul Gipe
Films and Videos of Historic Wind Turbines from 1925 to the Present
I’ve uploaded a series of films on historic wind turbines in operation to the Internet Archive. To help me keep track of them, I’ve posted the links and a short summary here. I’ve included some films in this list that are on YouTube.com as the provenance isn’t clear. Of course videos of operating wind turbines are quite common now, so I am limiting this list to those of historic interest.
Despite the doom & gloom here in the states where renewable energy is under a sustained assault by the Trump administration, Germany once again showed the Western world how a modern industrial nation can make the energy transition. In 2025 Wind turbines alone in Germany generated more electricity than coal, …
Wind Energy for Kids (Wind Energie Kinderleicht) is a little book for little people by Thomas Simons. The 27-page booklet is 6 inches by 6 inches, but richly illustrated with simple themes about wind energy. The themes and their illustrations are ideal for parents to read to their children. I …
Mural on village wall in the central Appenine town Tocco da Casauria depicting the installation of two Riva-Calzoni wind turbines 1992. Circa late 1990s. This photo was likely taken in 1998 during a tour of Italian wind sites. Tocco is a small town of 2,800 in the province of Pescara …
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Koog is famous in the annals of wind energy. The polder in Schleswig-Holstein’s Dithmarshen kreis hosted Germany’s first wind farm in the 1980s. Dubbed Windenergiepark Westküste, the site’s 30 wind turbines included early AeroMan 30 kW, Enercon E-16, and elektrOmat 25 wind turbines. I made a pilgrimage to the site …
We recently completed a 1,200 mile round trip in a Chevy Bolt EV. We drove from Bakersfield, California to Grants Pass, Oregon, following a series of planned charging stops without a lot of fuss. It was mostly a piece of cake. We’ve come a long way since we first started …
There’s continuing confusion about what adapters are necessary for non-Tesla EVs to use Tesla chargers. Before we get into what adapters non-Tesla drivers need, I should note that most 2026 EVs and onward will use Tesla[i] charging plugs so adapters won’t be needed to use Tesla charge stations.[ii] Superchargers (DCFC) …
Other Articles
Here we go again — the United States of America beating up on weaker nations in order to capture their oil for itself. The overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 (conducted with the enthusiastic support of the UK) was about kneecapping an alleged socialist, Mohammad Mosaddegh, but one of the reasons he was considered so dangerous was because he posed a threat to US access to Iranian oil. Fast forward a few decades and we have Poppy Bush coming to the aid of the aggressively undemocratic rulers of Kuwait in order, once again, to promote free access to that country’s abundant oil reserves. Then came President BushLeague, who puffed out his chest and hollered about “yellow cake” and “weapons of mass destruction,” but his real interest was in preserving American access to Iraqi oil reserves.
With the news of the US’ actions in Venezuela this morning, we are reminded again of how reducing oil demand can lead to less conflict – and electric vehicles are our best bet for doing so. . . Mr. Trump stated outright this morning that the reason for the invasion was to steal Venezuela’s oil. Although, this will likely be a difficult process due to decaying infrastructure and long-term destabilization in the country, partially caused by US sanctions to begin with.
Like California, Australia has an enormous amount of solar. The country’s climate-change-and-energy minister just announced that, starting in July, electricity suppliers will be required to offer at least three free hours of midday power in some regions. This will give people a reason to charge their electric vehicles, use heat pumps to precool or preheat their homes and water, and store more clean electricity in batteries when cheap energy is abundant.
A modern windmill — or wind turbine, to be exact — is not so much a constructionthat invites affection or radiates pastoral comfort. Rather, it is something built out ofan urgent necessity — a need for a better means of generating electricity, an inventionmade to wean society away from polluting ourselves into oblivion.
The dismantling of the Muel wind farm demonstrates that circularity in wind energy is already an industrial reality. The results, with an outstanding 99.85% of materials recovered or recycled, confirm that recycling or recovering nearly 100% of a turbine is not science fiction, but the outcome of applying engineering, collaboration, and technical knowledge. The next step for the industry will be to make it faster, more cost-effective, and with greater added value in each material flow, consolidating circular economy as a standard practice in future repowering projects.
Europe should seek constructive cooperation with China on energy policy. Even though the two regions are developing very differently in socio-political terms, cooperation in the field of energy and climate policy offers enormous opportunities for the whole world. Europe and China can play a key role in the global energy transformation and in the global fight against climate change by using their resources for this purpose. This naturally requires constructive dialogue on an equal footing, in which both blocs formulate their own and shared interests and develop their relations on a clear basis. This also means that Europe and China can and should work together to convince numerous other countries that the path of renewable energies is the path to a good future for all people, a prosperous and more peaceful world that successfully overcomes the climate crisis.
The following pages include some of the photos from my collection, including both digital and scanned images.
My photographs have appeared in Popular Science, Sierra, Solar Age, Alternative Sources of Energy, L’Espresso, Air & Space Smithsonian, Windpower Monthly, WindStats, Renewable Energy World, and other magazines, in several engineering and physics textbooks, on brochures and posters published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, by Friends of the Earth (UK), by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the World Wildlife Fund.
