The numbers are in, and as expected 2008 set a record year for the worldwide wind industry as new wind farms generating a total of 27,000 megawatts of greenhouse gas-free electricity came online, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
The headline was that the United States overtook the world’s green superpower, Germany, by installing 8,358 megawatts in 2008 - a 50% jump from the previous year and enough wind energy to power two million American homes. But the big story this year will be China’s rapid emergence as the next global wind power.
China last year doubled its wind energy capacity - for the fourth straight year - adding 6,300 megawatts of new electricity generation for a total capacity of 12,210 megawatts. A third of the world’s new wind capacity last year was installed in Asia, with China accounting for 73% of that power. China reached its 2010 target of generating 5,000 megawatts of wind-powered electricity in 2007 and is expected to hit its 2030 goal of 30,000 megawatts years early.
Of course, 30,000 megawatts of wind is but a flicker in a country with more than 3,00,000 megawatts of coal-fired energy online but it’s huge by world standards and has spawned both a burgeoning domestic wind industry and growing investment by overseas companies. General Electric (GE), one of only two U.S. turbine makers, operates a factory in China and in January the company announced a joint venture with China’s A-Power Energy Generation to make turbine gearboxes.
As the financial crisis slows growth in the U.S. and Europe, India is another potential wind power. It ended 2008 with 9,645 megawatts of wind energy and added more capacity that year - 1,800 megawatts - than former world leaders Germany and Spain.
Installed global wind capacity now stands at 120.8 gigawatts with the 2008 turbine market worth $47.5 billion, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
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