Preliminary data shows world wind electric generating capacity climbing from 17,800 megawatts in 2000 to an estimated 23,300 megawatts in 2001—a dramatic one-year gain of 5,500 megawatts or 31 percent, reports Earth-policy.
Its not content, but it's good news.
14 January 2002
As generating costs continue to fall and as public concern about climate change escalates, the world is fast turning to wind for its electricity.
Since 1995, world wind-generating capacity has increased an astounding 487 percent, or nearly fivefold. During the same period, the use of coal, the principal alternative for generating electricity, declined by 9 percent.
One megawatt of wind-generating capacity typically will satisfy the electricity needs of 350 households in an industrial society, or roughly 1,000 people.
Thus, the 23,300 megawatts of generating capacity now in place is sufficient to meet the residential electricity needs of some 23 million people--equal to the combined population of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
In wind electric-generating capacity, Germany leads the world with 8,000 megawatts, nearly a third of the total. The United States, which launched the modern wind power industry in California in the early 1980s, follows
with 4,150 megawatts. Spain is in third place, with 3,300 megawatts. Denmark, which is fourth with 2,500 megawatts, now gets 18 percent of its electricity from wind. Two thirds of the capacity added in 2001 was
concentrated in the top three countries: Germany added 1,890 megawatts; the United States, 1,600; and Spain, 1,065. For the United States, this translates into a growth in generating capacity of some 63 percent in 2001.
Despite this spectacular growth, development of the earth's wind resources has barely begun. In densely populated Europe, there is enough easily accessible offshore wind energy to meet all of the region's electricity needs. In the United States, there is enough harnessable wind energy in just 3 of the 50 states--North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas--to satisfy the country's electricity needs. And China can easily double its current electricity generation from wind alone, says the organisation.
www.earth-policy.org

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