Page 25 - Fluid Power Engineering

Overview of W ind Energy Business 3

3.497
Denmark 3.163
Portugal 3.535
2.862
United Kingdom 4.092
3.195
France 4.521
3.404
Italy 4.85
3.736
2009
India 10.925
9.587 2008
Spain 19.143
16.689
Germany 25.777
23.897
China 12.21 26.01
USA 35.159
25.23
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
FIGURE 1-3 Total installed capacity of wind power (GW) by country for top ten
countries. 1

The prominence of wind in the last half of the first decade of the
twenty-first century is evident in the fact that it is the leading source of
newly installed electricity generation capacity in the United States. In
the United States, out of a total of 20 GW of new electricity generation
2
in 2008, 42% was from wind energy. The percentage has risen steadily
since 2005, when wind was 12% among generation types in annual
capacityaddition.Fromanenergystandpoint,theprominenceofwind
is even more impressive. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
2
(LBL) report predicts, “almost 60% of the nation’s projected increase
in electricity generation from 2009 through 2030 would be met with
wind electricity. Although future growth trends are hard to predict,
it is clear that a significant portion of the country’s new generation

United Kingdom 678 10
Denmark 426 237
Netherlands 247
Sweden 134 30
Germany 60

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Total capacity end-2008 Capacity installed in 2009
FIGURE 1-4 Total installed capacity of offshore wind power (MW) in the top
five countries. 1