The Global Wind Energy Council has announced the world’s wind power capacity grew to 157.9 GW in 2009. During last year, 37.5 GW of wind turbine capacity was added, representing growth of 31% over 2008.
A third of this extra capacity occurred in a single country – China, which experienced yet another year of over 100% growth.
According to Steve Sawyer, GWEC’s Secretary General, “Copenhagen didn’t bring us any closer to a global price on carbon, but wind energy continued to grow due to national energy policy in our main markets and also because many governments in prioritised renewable energy development in their economic recovery plans."
The global wind market for turbine installations in 2009 was worth approximately AUD 71 billion dollars and the GWEC estimates around half a million people are now employed by the wind industry globally.
While China was the world’s largest market last year, more than doubling its wind generation capacity from 12.1 GW in 2008 to 25.1 GW at the end of 2009, the US continues to lead the field in terms of total installed, grid-connected capacity with 35 GW. Against all initial expectations, the US wind energy market installed nearly 10 GW in 2009, thanks to the US Recovery Act’s strong focus on wind energy development.
Newly added capacity of 1,270 MW in India along with contributions by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan made Asia the biggest regional market for wind power in 2009, with more than 14 GW of new capacity.
Europe continued to see strong growth also with 10.5 GW installed in region last year, led by Spain (2.5GW) and Germany (1.9 GW). Italy, France and the UK all added more than 1 GW of new wind power capacity each.
Aside from the massive green jobs boost, the environmental benefits of the burgeoning wind industry have been substantial too. According to Christian Kjaer, CEO of the European Wind Energy Association, "The 158GW of global wind capacity in place at the end of 2009 will produce 340 TWh of clean electricity and save 204 million tons of CO2 every year."
