Another Great Year for Wind Power

Another Great Year for Wind Power

This year shows strong growth for wind power when the total global installed capacity added a record 62,000 MW, making the total capacity more than 480,000 MW. Wind power is by far the renewable source with the largest growth in worldwide capacity during the last decade.

The US was quite slow adopting wind power compared to many European countries, but passed Germany as the biggest producer of wind power in the world in year 2013. US now has a capacity of 84,000 MW compared to 48,000 MW for Germany. China was the country with the strongest growth related to the total capacity, adding another 25% and still the third biggest producer in the world with 30,000 MW installed.

US is though behind Europe when it comes to wind power as part of the total electricity demand, serving only 6%, compared to 12,7% for Europe. Denmark is with 40% still the country with the highest share of wind energy, most likely reaching 50% within the next five years. Even though wind power as a renewable resource has its environmental advantages, the increasing demand for wind power is related to the low cost for the energy output, pressed down with more efficient larger wind turbines and the maturity of the market.

The trend in the last decade of wind energy has been towards more offshore sites. In Europe, offshore now counts for about 19% of all wind power capacity, compared to less than 2% 15 years ago. The already projected wind farms give a forecast of about 50% of the total European capacity to be offshore by year 2030.

Argument: Wind power has had a strong growth during the last decade and will continue to. The numbers are from the European Wind Energy Association, the American Wind Energy Association, the Danish Wind Industry Association, the German WindEnergy Association.

Anumakonda Jagadeesh comments:

The forecast is reasonable. Wind Energy (Especially Offshore) will advance in leaps and bounds in countries where wind energy is already having significant impact.