SUSTAINABLE WORLDVIEW assuming continuous innovation.

Conse-
quently, global demand is satisfied by
17.8 trillion kWh in 2030. Combined
with the Advanced wind-growth scenario,
some 2,110,000 MW of wind turbines

Driving Winds of Change are installed cumulatively by 2030, gen-

erating nearly 30 percent of global
demand, or 5.2 trillion kWh.
Wind can be a major global energy source, By 2020, the worldwide cost of pro-
but it depends on conducive policies. ducing electricity from wind energy is
expected to fall to 4–5 cents per kilowatt-
By Michael Totten hour at good sites and 5.4–6.7 cents per
kilowatt-hour at sites with low average

T
he indefatigable conservationist
David Brower would remind citizens,
“Politicians are like weather vanes,
and our job is to make the wind blow.”
Nothing could be truer in the case of ensur-
ing politicians make judicious policy
and regulatory decisions that seize oppor-
tunities presented by economically attrac-
tive, ecologically sus-
tainable wind power.
Now operational
in more than 70 coun-
tries, wind power has
been the fastest-grow-
ing source of renew-
able energy. World-
wide, wind power
expanded more than
15-fold over the Michael Totten
course of a decade,
from 4,800 megawatts
in 1995 to installed wind capacity of 74,000
MW by the end of 2006. The wind market
grew a record 41 percent in 2005, and
despite supply-chain constraints, in 2006
achieved an impressive 32 percent growth.
Some 150,000 people now employed in
the global wind industry were responsible
for the $23 billion in new generating equip-
ment installed in 2006.
locations, wind can compete with the cost wind speeds. The number of jobs created
of either coal or gas-fired power. by the wind energy market in 2030 under
Wind energy has the potential to the Advanced scenario reaches 2.1 mil-
become a major source of global electric- lion, more than 400 percent greater than
ity supply. But will politicians establish under the Reference scenario.
the policies required to make this poten-
tial a reality?
Study Projects Huge
Worldwide Growth
A compelling growth scenario is pre-
sented in the recent report, Global Wind
Energy Outlook (download at www.gwec.
net/index.php?id=65). According to the
study, wind energy could provide 30 per-
cent of the world’s electricity demand by
2030, “given the political will to promote
its large-scale deployment paired with far-
reaching energy efficiency measures.”
This growth would result from the
most ambitious, or Advanced, scenario
among three the report examines. The
other two cases are a Reference scenario
based on figures from the International
Energy Agency (IEA), and a Moderate ver-
sion that assumes current targets for
renewable energy are successful. The
Advanced version assumes adoption of a
range of favorable policies.
These three wind-growth scenarios are
GE ENERGY

Europe still leads the market, with
nearly 50,000 MW of installed capacity,
representing 65 percent of the global total
and producing roughly 100 billion kilo-
watt-hours (kWh) of electricity. This
capacity is equal to 3.3 percent of total EU
electricity consumption.
The countries with the highest total
installed capacity are Germany (20,621
MW), Spain (11,615 MW), the United
States (11,603 MW), India (6,270 MW) and
Denmark (3,136 MW). Thirteen countries
around the world have more than 1,000
MW of wind capacity, with France and
Canada reaching this threshold in 2006.
The cost of wind power has fallen
dramatically as the world market has
expanded. Today’s wind turbine produces
180 times more electricity per year at less
than half the cost per unit (kWh) than its
counterpart of two decades ago. At good
then matched with two scenarios for glob-
al energy demand based on IEA projec-
tions. Under the Reference scenario,
growth in demand doubles from the base-
line 13.4 trillion kWh in 2003 to reach
25.7 trillion kWh by 2030. Such growth
will require the global power sector to con-
struct some 4,800,000 MW of capacity
between now and 2030, at an investment
of nearly $4 trillion for the new generation,
plus transmission and distribution net-
works. Combined with the Reference wind-
growth scenario, this construction results
in wind satisfying just 3.5 percent of glob-
al demand, or 0.9 trillion kWh, in 2030.
A second, High Energy-Efficiency
demand scenario, focuses on satisfying
nearly 8 trillion kWh through more effi-
cient “delivery” of energy demand servic-
es based on current best practice and
available technologies in the future and
The wide-scale installation of wind farms in
the Great Plains would bring an extraordi-
nary financial boom for rural communities.
The amount of carbon dioxide emis-
sions displaced annually reaches 3.1 bil-
lion tons by 2030 under the Advanced
scenario, nearly 600 percent larger than
under the Reference scenario. The report
assumes 600 tons of CO2 displaced per
million kilowatt-hours as an average value
from wind generation. Although not cal-
culated in the report, the market value of
the Advanced scenario’s CO2 annual sav-
ings would approach $1 trillion in 2030
based on a likely carbon trading price
around $30 per ton.
To achieve 30 percent of total electricity
demand from wind power by 2030, the

14 www.solartoday.org SOLAR TODAY

study’s authors assume annual growth
rates in wind power capacity to be 20 per-
cent between now and 2015, then falling
to 17 percent between 2016 and 2020,
with a drop to approximately 10 percent
from 2001 to 2025, before falling below 5
percent. For comparison, since 2000 the
average annual increase in global cumula-
tive installed capacity has been 28 per-
cent. Other assumptions include an aver-
age turbine size of 2 MW, compared to
1.2 MW in 2006, and average capacity fac-
tor increases from 24 percent today to 28
percent by 2012.
request for wind R&D once again propos-
es a funding cut. This policy failure con-
tinues the misguided practices of the past.
The IEA estimates that between 1974 and
2002, 92 percent of all R&D funding ($267
billion) was spent on nonrenewable ener-
gy sources, largely fossil fuel and nuclear
technologies, compared to 8 percent ($23
billion) for all renewable technologies.
And conventional energy sources still
receive an estimated $250 billion in sub-
sidies per year worldwide.
In testimony before the Senate, the
American Wind Energy Association recent-
ly urged that the 2008 wind R&D budget
be increased by 250 percent, which would
keep us on course for the vision described
above. Let’s heed David Brower’s sage
advice and drive political weather vanes in
the right direction. ●
Michael Totten, the senior director of
Climate, Water and Ecosystem Services at
Conservation International, resides in
Denver and works in China. Contact him at
m.totten@conservation.org.

For Americans, Benefits

Warrant Policy Support
What would this growth look like for
North America? In the Advanced wind-
growth scenario, 570,000 MW of turbines
would be installed by 2030, up from
13,000 MW total installed in the United
States, Canada and Mexico in 2006. This
implies locating 385,000 turbines, 2 MW
each, throughout North America to pro-
vide 30 percent of total electricity. Let’s put
this into context.
More than 90 percent of U.S. terrestri-
al wind resources occur in the Great
Plains. According to an article by energy
analyst Charles Komanoff, the land space
requirements to provide 100 percent of
current U.S. electricity consumption would
require 400,000 multi-megawatt-capacity
wind turbines strategically placed over
the Great Plains’ 1.2 million square miles
(“Whither Wind?” September/October
2006, www.orionmagazine.org). The actu-
al footprint of these turbines, hypothet-
ically squeezed into one space, would
occupy just 5 square miles, about the
size of a single large Wyoming strip mine.
But even when spaced out for optimum
wind capture, they would occupy just 2
percent of the Great Plains. And even
then, the other 90 percent of the land
surrounding the wind turbines would
continue to be available for ranching,
farming and restoration of native prairie
grasses. For rural communities, this
would bring an extraordinary financial
boom. With a farm or ranch typically
receiving a several-percent annual royal-
ty from the wind farm, the income
would, on average, exceed the earnings
from farming or ranching. This amount
of land is modest relative to the income
that can be generated. Currently, farms
and ranches occupy 75 percent of the
Great Plains, yet they generate less than
5 percent of the region’s GDP.
In spite of this immense triple-bot-
tom-line gain for people, profits and the
planet, President Bush’s 2008 budget

July/August 2007 15