World Wind Power Grows by 6%

By Colin Houghton

Wind Farm1 1 World Wind Power Grows by 6%

The world’s capacity for harnessing wind power increased by 41Gw in 2011, according to figures from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) released a few days ago. 7 February 2012. The GWEC annual market statistics reveal that the total installed global wind power increased to more than 238,000 MW at the end of last year. This represents an increase of 21%, with an increase in the size of the annual global market of just over 6%.  Today, about 75 countries worldwide have commercial wind power installations, with 22 of them already passing the 1 Gw level.

 

The largest addition came from China, which installed an additional 18Gw and almost three times as much as the US with 6,810Mw. The tally at the end of 2011 was China with 62GW with the US with 47GW.

Other step increases came from Germany, adding 2Gw to make their capacity 29Gw and India, increasing from 13 to 16 Gw.

Europe installed a total of 10 Gw to take its total to 96.6GW. After Germany, the next biggest capacities are Spain, France, Italy and the UK, although the UK has a lot planned to come online in 2011.

In emerging markets, Brazil and Mexico continued to add capacity with 583Mw (to 1.5Gw) and 354MW (873MW) respectively. Both were increases on last year’s figures.

 

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OAXACA 80MW WINDFARM, MEXICO

Oaxaca 80Mw Windfarm,  Mexico

 

In Africa, Egypt has stayed at 550Mw, perhaps not surprising given the non-wind related turbulence in the region, while small country Cape Verde has sprung from 2Mw in 2010 to 24Mw.  The small island state of Cape Verde is using wind power to boost its energy supply and establish wind as a reliable source of non-polluting renewable energy. The project was awarded the ‘Best Renewable Project in Africa’ prize at the Africa Energy Awards 2011 in Johannesburg. Constyruction should be completed later this year (photo below)

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GWEC secretary general Steve Sawyer was upbeat about the figures. He said:

“We look forward to more new markets opening up in Africa, Asia and Latin America in 2012 and we expect to see some of the new markets in Latin America beyond Brazil start to approach critical mass.

“But at the end of the day we will be hard pressed to keep the industry’s growth up to its potential without a global price on carbon and other measures to account for the real costs to society of conventional power generation.

Steve Sawyer1 World Wind Power Grows by 6%

The Global Wind Energy Council, provides an international forum for the wind energy field. Steve Sawyer has thirty years of experience with Greenpeace in the area of energy and climate change policy, including experience as CEO with both Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International. He has advised the Chinese government on the China’s Renewable Energy Law and has served as head of delegation to many sessions of the Kyoto Protocol/ UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Steve Sawyer also said:

“Despite the state of the global economy, wind power continues to be the renewable generation technology of choice. 2011 was a tough year, as will be 2012, but the long term fundamentals of the industry remain very sound.”

Considering the economic crisis in Europe, the European wind industry is still holding its own and better. But what would be even better would be if the EU were to set binding renewable energy targets for 2030. Once the economic crisis has flattened out, there is a view that we will be kicking ourselves for not having set a target earlier and attracting potential investors.

Another New Wind Farm 300x2001 World Wind Power Grows by 6%