KimberlyAnna’s Cornerview

How cool?!  After this latest decision in Texas to approve a massive wind transmission project and over $4.93B of investment by transmission companies, Texas could triple its current wind generation capability by 2013. This new capability would put this one US state ahead of all other US states and even with or ahead of Germany, the technological leader in this industry.

From the Global Wind Energy Council’s Global Wind 2007 report:

In its best year yet, the global wind industry installed over 20,000 MW in 2007. This development was lead by the US, China and Spain, and it brought the world-wide installed capacity to 94,123 MW. This is an increase of 31% compared with the 2006 market, and represents an overall increase in global installed capacity of about 27%.

The top five countries in terms of installed capacity are Germany (22.3 GW), the US (16.8 GW), Spain (15.1 GW), India (8 GW) and China (6.1 GW). In terms of economic value, the global wind market in 2007 was worth about 25bn EUR or 37bn US$ in new generating equipment.

American wind farms will generate around 48 bn kWh of electricity in 2008, just over 1% of US. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes. In 2007, 34 US states were producing electricity with wind power. The states with the most cumulative installed wind power capacity are: Texas (4,356 MW), California (2,439 MW), Minnesota (1,299 MW), Iowa (1,273 MW) and Washington (1,163 MW).

GWEC is predicting the global wind market to grow by over 155% from its current size to reach 240 GW of total installed capacity by the year 2012. This would represent an addition of 146 GW in 5 years, equaling an investment of over 180bn EUR (277 bn US$, both in 2007 value). The electricity produced by wind energy will reach over 500 TWh in 2012 (up from 200 TWh in 2007), accounting for around 3% of global electricity production (up from just over 1% in 2007). The main areas of growth during this period will be North America and Asia, and more specifically the US and China.