Unless you live under a rock it’s clear that in the near future we are all going to be driving electric cars. What does this mean? We are all going to be using more and more electricity. The gas we now use to run our cars will soon be replaced with electricity. This is certain to drive up the cost of electricity. But did you know that if you create more electricity than you can consume the electric company has to buy your excess juice? That is the law in the United States.

All of this has gotten me thinking. What if everyone in the US where it’s feasible due to weather conditions built a windmill on their roof or in their backyard and generated electricity? At the very least this would cut down your electric bill and if you ever generated enough electricity you would make money as your electric company purchased your excess capacity as required by law. Think about it? Every home could have a windmill on it like homes used to have TV antenna’s in the old days.

As the switch occurs to electric cars, generating our own electricity makes more and more sense. Even if the windmill just created enough electricity to power our cars we come out way ahead by saving the cost we now pay out for gasoline. We could power our cars for free or at least the cost of installing and maintaining the windmill. And here is where the government can come in and really make our society go green.
The government could provide real tax breaks for windmill purchases and installations to make this a feasible plan for all Americans living in the right wind climate.

Without the emissions from gas powered cars how much cleaner would our environment be? That depends of course upon how the electricity is generated that we would use to power our electric cars. If the electric company burned extra fossil fuels to provide the extra electricity it might save little or nothing. But if we all generated the necessary electricity from windmills on top of our homes the emissions saved would be enormous.

Putting windmills on top of our homes in the near future makes sense in any number of ways once electric cars are feasible and especially with government tax breaks to help offset the installation costs. It would save everyone money from lower electric bills and from the money saved from not purchasing gas to run our cars. It would help prevent the electric companies from having to burn extra fossil fuels to make up for the increased capacity needs to power our electric cars. And it would help save the environment by eliminating the emissions from both gas powered cars and fossil fuel generating electric power plants.