Published on: 07/09/08

Tybee Island — The wind gusted to 25 mph at the far end of this beach town’s famous pier. A dozen kite surfers below skimmed across the foam-flecked ocean. Shirtless and sunburned fishermen praised the cooling powers of the southerly breezes.

The wind proved a recreational godsend. Could it also prove a commercial success?

Georgia Tech researchers, who recently completed a study on wind energy off Tybee and Jekyll islands, think so. Southern Co., which commissioned the report, will further study whether a wind farm could generate enough electricity to be financially feasible.

Environmentalists and a smattering of Georgia tourists gushed about the possibility of a nonpolluting renewable energy source — even if the horizon is dotted with Statue of Liberty-sized turbines.

“It’d be clean energy and it wouldn’t hurt anything,” said Jack Lamb of Milledgeville, fishing for shark off the pier. “And if it was that far out, most people won’t know what it was. It’d look like a buoy.”

Wind energy’s time may not yet have come, but it’s getting closer. Electricity generated by wind jumped 45 percent last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Roughly 4.5 million U.S. households can now run on wind power.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently reported that wind turbines could generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2030. Houston — aka Oil Patch Central — started last week using wind-powered electricity for one-fourth of its municipal power needs.

Paul Wolff, a member of the Tybee City Council and the Georgia Wind Working Group, a public-private advocacy group, said Georgians have no choice but to embrace wind energy, given the geopolitical, environmental and financial burdens of oil, coal and nuclear power.

“I am hopeful that Georgians are intelligent enough to realize our very lifestyle, which is blissful in many ways, is threatened,” he said. “We can’t continue with the philosophy that we can use energy until it’s gone. We need to take charge of our own destiny.”

Many obstacles remain before wind electrifies Georgia homes, none greater than the fact that offshore wind farms don’t exist in the United States, as they do in Europe. Construction costs have jumped 50 percent the last three years.

Congress hasn’t renewed tax credits deemed necessary to boost production, unlike Washington’s subsidized embrace of ethanol and alternative fuels. Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, prefers coal and nuclear power. Only 4 percent of its power, mostly hydro-electric, is generated by renewable fuels.

“We need to see them looking beyond traditional energy sources and to improve on their renewable energy portfolio,” said Mary Carr of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “We need the Southern Co. to get serious about offshore wind.”

REALonomics.net advocates that the industry open up the property information portals to consumers and upgrade its approach to how it is interacting with the consumer by implementing more social networking such as www.CityBlogUSA.com, a community blogging network for every city in the USA.

Visit www.REALonomics.net.

The Company launched the BETA version of CityBlogUSA in July and has been test marketing positions in selective markets in its 50-State, 25,000+ cities network to real estate agents on an exclusive basis.

Company Vice President, Robert Barringer said, “we created CityBlog with the idea that consumers want to blog about their favorite cities or hometown and to directly post information about lifestyles, real estate, jobs, health care, schools and even politics from an insider’s perspective.”

“CityBlog Georgia allows residents, businesses and real estate industry professionals to open up the local information portals for those seeking to relocate and for those residents who want to post alternative information that the newspapers, TV and magazines aren’t reporting…after all, who knows more about a community than the people who live there?”, said Barringer.

Agents can “Stake a Claim” to their city as its “Real Estate and Relocation Specialist” and hold that position exclusively, interact by posting blogs, talk about real estate and any other local issues they would like to include in the blog.

Barringer said, “The most powerful thing about CityBlog is that any resident can become an author…we are just setting up a network and trying to sell ad space…we believe in the consumer-centricity of the economy, especially when it comes to real estate and local lifestyles.”

People can blog Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Savannah, Athens, Macon, Sandy Springs, Albany, Marietta, and any other city and have the same blogging experience. You can jump to any Georgia city and be blogging in minutes by going to www.GeorgiaBlogPage.com, this very site.

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Pick a city from the dropdown box to the right, sign up, and start blogging!

You can join the CityBlogUSA phenomena by blogging about your favorite cities or home town…it’s absolutely FREE.

CityBlogUSA is dedicated to resident blogging in every city in the USA! And now you can become an author or a contributor and begin to tell the world all about your favorite city or home town. After all, who knows more about a city than the people who live there?

Businesses, real estate professionals and others can become Sponsors and advertise directly in the the cities of their choice, targeting their advertisement to the people who want and need their product or service.

CityBlogUSA is great! We’re the talk of the town!

You can jump to any State and city right here in this blog!