Global Status of Wind Power
Per Krogsgaard
It is surely an honour to be here and do a presentation on wind energy nearly 20 years ago when I a sales Manager from Vestas sold the first wind turbine to Turkey. I am really proud to see this fine equipment still working as many others of the world first wind turbine generators.
Wind power today is a success story supplying electricity to millions of people employing tens of thousands of people and generating billions of kwh. The pace of change and progress has been rapid for such a young industry.
The benefits of the wind power are compelling; environmental protection, economic growth job creation, diversity of supply, rapid deployment , technology transfer and innovation. Wind Power is the most advanced and commercially available of renew energy technologies . A totally natural ressource which provides power which is both pollution free and inexhaustible In recent years it has been the fastest growing energy source.
Today wind power provides the Danish society with 15 per cent of the electricity consumption and similar figures are to be seen on the German federal States of Schleswig Holstein and Lower Saxony. There are a tremendous growth in the installation of wind power in the European continent especially in Germany, Spain and Denmark and with the new reinstated power Tax credit the US market will pick up again . In the developing part of the World we have and will see development in China, and India and new emerging market are on the rim of coming development.
A number of scientific assessment brought together has shown that there are extreme large and very well spread wind resources through the continents to sustain 53,000 terawatt hours of electricity – this is among four times bigger than the worlds entire electricity consumption in 1998. There is no limiting factors that the eventual goal of having 10 per cent of the worlds electricity consumption covered by wind energy by the year 2020 if the political will is there.
The electricity grid is there to accept the wind power and in Denmark there are plans for wind to account for as much as 50 per cent of the electricity by year 2030. On the current expectation wind power installation is expected to grow at an annual rate of 20 per cent per year (past experience show higher growth rates in the wind industry ) in the coming 4 – 5 years this will result in a total installed capacity of wind power by end 2005 of 57.000 MW.