10 Questions You Should to Know about Latest Wind Energy News

1. What is wind energy?

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Capable of ecological impacts as diverse as the gentle pollination of wheat and corn to devastating wind storms that keel over trees and homes, wind is all around us. But what actually makes the wind blow?

According to a U.S. Department of Energy webpage, wind is technically a form of solar energy, in the sense that uneven heating of the Earth’s atmosphere is one of three factors causing it. Irregularities of the Earth’s surface — that is, any variation of our topography — and the planet’s rotation. Subsequently, those factors influence how fast and in what direction air in the atmosphere is pushed.

To harness the power from that air movement into mechanical power, wind energy developers typically install massive turbines that rotate like pinwheels across vast swathes of land or sea.

2. Where can we build wind farms?

Americans may be most familiar with the sight of wide-open fields full of wind turbines, but onshore wind farms are only one piece of the wind energy landscape. A significantly smaller but rapidly growing corner of the industry seeks to locate wind turbines in large bodies of water, like lakes and oceans.

In addition to large bodies of water, “the best locations in terms of wind resources are typically high on mountains, in large open fields, or on the edge of bodies of water,” stated a renewable energy consulting firm in a news release in a trade publication. Access to transmission lines is also crucial in order to transport the carbon-free power, often generated in rural or remote areas, to power-hungry, populated urban and suburban centers.

However, while most wind turbines need to be fastened to some sort of stable terrain, another class of wind farms is emerging. Floating offshore wind farms are being pursued in the U.S. and abroad to open up vast tracts of potential new offshore wind areas.

According to one analytics firm’s report, more than 26.2 GW of floating offshore wind capacity has been slated for construction by across the planet, with developers in countries like Portugal and Japan making arrangements to test the technology.

Equinor, a major energy developer that historically was a petroleum refiner but has in recent years expanded into offshore wind, built the world’s first floating offshore wind farm in the U.K. in . Since then, it has had the best ratio of actual energy output to maximum possible output compared to any other wind farm in the U.K., according to the Norwegian energy developer.

Within in the U.S., the state of Maine is in the early stages of hosting the country’s first floating offshore wind array in federal waters, a pilot conducted in partnership with a public university and developers. And in California, a state whose coastal waters are generally a lot deeper than those of East Coast states, floating offshore wind farms are being touted as a way for the U.S. to meet its offshore wind goal, as well as for California to hit its own decarbonization deadline.

3. Which states and countries have the most wind farms?

Regardless of location, more than four-fifths of U.S. states had utility-scale wind power projects, meaning the power generated was large enough to impact an electricity grid’s operations. Despite the Midwest’s fossil-fuel-heavy reputation, the five states that generated the most wind energy in were Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas and Illinois, representing more than half the country’s total wind generation, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration webpage.

Very few megawatts are currently generated by U.S. offshore wind projects, like Rhode Island’s 30 MW Block Island Wind Farm, at the moment. However, numerous projects, including the recently approved Vineyard Wind I, which will deliver hundreds of megawatts to the regional grid, are in various development stages at the moment.

Wind farms in the U.S. generate about one-fifth of the entire planet’s wind-based electricity. However, China leads the world in wind-based electricity generation, with more than double what the U.S. produces. From there, Germany, India and the U.K. round out the top-five wind energy-producing countries.

But the countries with the largest amounts of installed wind turbines aren’t necessarily the same nations that have the greatest wind energy generation potential. For example, Russia, Somalia, Oman, Vietnam, Iceland and Kazakhstan all have “little or no installed wind farm capacity” compared to their actual potential, according to an energy news project sponsored in part by the Spanish Wind Energy Association.

Purported problems with wind energy

Although the energy source doesn’t emit greenhouse gases during power generation, the industry has its own set of complications.

4. Flying animal deaths and habitat disruption

Active wind farms do kill flying animals, like birds and bats, but not in the same way. While birds are killed when a blade strikes them, bats die when “the pressure wave from the turning blades hits [them] and damages their internal organs,” according to an Oregon State University webpage.

The American Bird Conservatory examined multiple studies and found that estimates range from at least 140,000 birds killed by wind turbines annually up to potentially 679,089 birds. And wind turbines have been called the greatest threat to bats in the U.S., resulting in industry trade group guidelines meant to reduce fatalities through actions like slowing down turbine speeds.

However, researchers are actively testing detection and monitoring technologies to limit the number of avian and bat deaths by wind turbine strikes, as well as evaluating the carcasses of dead animals near turbines to evaluate which species are prone to being hit. Other techniques, like painting wind turbines black, have been considered to minimize strikes and deaths.

Additionally, wind farm construction and ongoing generation activities can result in habitat loss for flying as well as land-based creatures. In the U.S. West, a bird known as the sage grouse requires vast stretches of sagebrush, but wind farms break that habitat up into smaller parcels. Migratory soaring birds, like black kites, also lose habitat when they are forced to fly around wind farms.

5. Wind turbine recyclability

Another complaint of the wind energy industry is that the massive blades that spin to create that power aren’t eco-friendly. The blades are more than 100 feet long so it’s not easy to bring them to the location in the first place. But taking down a wind turbine, built to withstand extreme weather conditions, means cutting up the blades and hauling them to a landfill for burial.

Companies with a stake in the success of the industry say their staff are working to recycle the wind turbine blades. For example, GE Renewable Energy and Veolia North America announced in late that the companies were working together to develop circular recycling for wind turbines, the first-such program in the country.

6. Space requirements

Weighing more than 1,000 tons, wind turbines can be hundreds of feet tall with blades longer than football fields. According to Arcadia, an energy company, a single MW of onshore wind energy requires up to 50 acres of space.

Even on the open ocean, problems related to the location and space requirements of offshore wind farms have arisen. Fishermen in the Gulf of Maine, for example, have protested offshore wind development in part due to navigation concerns.

That requirement to operate on vast bundles of open space is a dealbreaker for some opponents, particularly those who want to use that land for other purposes.

“Wind resource development might not be the most profitable use of the land,” notes the U.S. Department of Energy on a webpage. “Land suitable for wind-turbine installation must compete with alternative uses for the land, which might be more highly valued than electricity generation.”

While farmland communities, in particular, have been wary of the amount of potentially fertile land being used for immense wind farms, dual-use projects have increasingly been part of the wind energy conversation. According to a  white paper written by a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, wind energy should be viewed as a key farmland preservation method, as the lease payments that an energy developer makes to small-time landowners can help bridge financial gaps and bring more cash to the local economy.

7. Transmission constraints

Because of the gigantic amount of space needed for a wind farm, naturally it’s difficult to site a wind farm too close to a developed urban center that doesn’t have plenty of empty acres on which to build. Yet rural areas historically have had issues with sufficient transmission infrastructure, meaning that there aren’t enough poles, power lines and similar structures to convey all the power generated at a wind farm to the places that want all of that electricity.

Similar issues present themselves in regards to offshore wind transmission.

The federal government has previously issued reports explaining that a third of the entire country’s power demand could be satisfied by wind energy if enough new transmission was built.

However, “in the baseline scenario with no transmission expansion, substantial renewable energy curtailment—times in which wind farm operators are told not to produce energy due to limited capacity on the grid—could become a major issue,” the report notes. “In this scenario, about 15.5% of wind energy capacity goes unused with consequent increases in system costs as a result of idled wind generation.”

Further, the federal study also found that “if just four currently proposed transmission projects [as of ] are built, wind curtailment can be reduced by about half, cutting lost generating potential to 7.8%.”

8. Shadow flicker and noise complaints

Some people who live adjacent to wind farms complain about the flicker effect of the shadows cast by rotating wind turbine blades when the sun is low in the sky.

“Although in many cases shadow flicker occurs only a few hours in a year, it can potentially create a nuisance for homeowners in close proximity to turbines,” notes a U.S. Department of Energy webpage. Some people living near wind farms or turbines have reported getting headaches from the flicker, while others complain about the noise levels.

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However, studies have been undertaken to examine any correlation between health impacts and wind turbines or their flicker and turbine noise have come up with little evidence beyond stress and annoyance.

A position statement, drafted after officials in San Diego County, California, examined available published research, notes that “the majority of evidence shows that, while noise from wind turbines is not causally related to adverse health effects, wind turbines may be a source of annoyance for a small minority of community residents. That annoyance may cause stress for these individuals, and that stress may be associated with certain reported health effects.”

However, the statement continued, “the weight of evidence suggests that, when sited properly, wind turbines are not related to adverse health effects.”

9. Intermittency

Despite predictive modeling technologies that generally provide developers with knowledge of what the wind resource in a given area is like, wind speeds can change quickly and without much notice. That intermittency makes it more difficult for grid planners to know exactly how much power will be transmitted onto their systems by a particular wind farm or turbine.

Because of that variability, reserve capacity is used as a buffer in case insufficient energy comes into the grid. Conversely, battery storage systems are increasingly being constructed alongside renewable energy projects like wind farms in order to store and later take advantage of excessive wind energy output.

Interestingly, a article in Scientific American suggests that the larger a wind farm is, the less corresponding reserve capacity is needed.

“While at first glance it might sound like adding too much renewable energy could destabilize the delicate balance of the electric grid, it turns out that renewable energy actually becomes more predictable as the number of renewable generators connected to the grid increases thanks to the effect of geographic diversity and the Law of Large Numbers,” according to the article.

10. U.S. Wind development plans

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden declared a new renewable goal for the country: 30 GW of offshore wind energy by . Procuring that amount of offshore wind energy would mark a major step toward achieving the overall federal goal of 100% clean energy procurement by .

Before that announcement, the offshore wind energy industry had already been heating up along the East Coast, particularly in the Northeast. Supportive state governments in the Mid-Atlantic up through New England have generally rolled out the red carpet for the industry, attracted to the promise of reliable, high-paying jobs for their constituents and a boost to their own state decarbonization goals.

Yet even in states that want offshore wind, traditional local industries accustomed to having full access to different parcels of land and sea are up in arms over sharing space with the wind industry.

For example, the state of Maine may be eager to seize the opportunities inherent in building up a major nascent energy industry but has needed to respond to local concerns regarding how the new industry may limit profitability in existing sectors. To that end, the governor recently signed legislation barring new offshore wind development in the state’s waters for a decade in a major concession to the state’s lobster fishing industry.

Despite local red tape, the wind industry made immense progress in , according to a trio of reports released by the federal government just this week to highlight the sector’s achievements.

Overall, “a record 16,836 MW of new utility-scale land-based wind power capacity [were] added in – representing $24.6 billion of investment in new wind power projects,” according to an accompanying press release,” noting that turbine prices also “steeply declined from levels seen a decade ago, from $1,800 per kilowatt in to $770–$850 per kilowatt now.”

Despite the federal government’s support, other national priorities can sometimes conflict with the push for wind power growth. For example, the U.S. Navy has previously created major hurdles for offshore wind development off California’s Pacific Coast due to their preference that there are zero potential obstacles for their ships.

Bridget is a freelance reporter and newsletter writer based in the Washington, D.C., area. She primarily writes about energy, conservation and the environment. Originally from Philadelphia, she graduated from Emerson College in with a degree in journalism and a minor in environmental studies. When she isn’t working on a story, she’s normally on a northern Maine lake or traveling abroad to practice speaking Spanish.

21 Frequently Asked Questions About Wind Energy

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1. Are wind turbines noisy?
2. Do wind turbines really save energy?
3. Are there enough wind resources around?
4. Can wind contribute significantly to electricity production?
5. Is there any progress in wind turbine technology?
6. Is wind energy expensive?
7. Is wind energy safe?
8. Are wind turbines reliable?
9. How much land is required to site wind Turbines?
10. Can wind turbines blend into the landscape?
11. How is the landscape affected after a wind turbine has been dismantled?
12. Do wind turbines bother wildlife?
13. Can wind turbines be placed anywhere?
14. Can wind turbines be used economically in inland areas?
15. How can the varying output from wind turbines be used in the electrical grid?
16. Will wind energy work on a small scale?
17. Can wind energy be used in developing countries?
18. Does wind energy create jobs?
19. Is wind energy popular in countries which already have many wind turbines?
20. What is the wind energy market like?
21. Why are Danish wind turbines well known around the world?

1. Wind Turbines Whisper Quietly, Now
Large, modern wind turbines have become very quiet. At distances above 200 metres, the swishing sound of rotor blades is usually masked completely by wind noise in the leaves of trees or shrubs.
There are two potential sources of noise from a wind turbine: Mechanical noise from the gearbox or generator, and aerodynamic noise from the rotor blades.

Mechanical noise has virtually disappeared from modern wind turbines. This is due to better engineering with more concern about avoiding vibrations. Other technical improvements include elastically dampened fastenings and couplings of the major components in the nacelle, and to a certain extent sound insulation. Finally, the basic components themselves, including gearboxes, have developed considerably over the years. Modern wind turbine gearboxes use "soft" gearwheels, i.e. toothed wheels with hardened surfaces and relatively elastic interiors. Read more in the guided tour page on designing for low mechanical noise.

Aerodynamic noise i.e. the "swish" sound of the rotor blades passing the tower of a wind turbine primarily arises at the tip and the back edge of the rotor blade. The higher the rotational speed, the louder the sound. Aerodynamic noise has been cut dramatically during the past ten years due to better design of rotor blades (particularly blade tips and back edges). Read more in the guided tour page on designing for low aerodynamic noise.
Pure tones can be very annoying to a listener, while "white noise" is hardly noticed at all. Rotor blade manufacturers take extreme care to ensure a smooth surface which is important to avoid pure tones. Likewise, manufacturers who install wind turbines take great care to ensure that the rotor blades are not damaged when a wind turbine is being installed.
Read more in the guided tour section on sound from wind turbines.

2. Wind Energy is Clean, and Saves Energy
Can a wind turbine ever recover the energy spent in producing maintaining, and servicing it?
Wind turbines use only the energy from the moving air to generate electricity. A modern 1,000 kW wind turbine in an average location will annually displace 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from other electricity sources, i.e. usually coal fired power stations.
The energy produced by a wind turbine throughout its 20 year lifetime (in an average location) is eighty times larger than the amount of energy used to build, maintain, operate, dismantle, and scrapping it again.
In other words, on average it takes only two to three months for a wind turbine to recover all the energy required to build and operate it.
Read more in the guided tour section on the energy payback period for wind turbines

3. Wind Energy is Abundant
Wind resources are plentiful. Wind will not run out.
Denmark is one of the countries which is planning for substantial amounts of electricity consumption to be provided by wind energy. Already (), wind energy is covering 13 per cent of Danish electricity consumption, a figure which will increase to at least 16 per cent by . 50 per cent of that country's electricity consumption will come from wind by the year according to Government plans ("Energy 21").
The wind resources above the shallow waters in the seas around Europe could theoretically provide all of Europe's electricity supplies several times over.
In Denmark alone, 40 per cent of the country's present electricity consumption could be covered from offshore wind parks located in an area of some 1,000 square kilometres of shallow sea territory.

4. Wind Energy Makes a Difference
Wind Turbines have grown dramatically in size and power output.
A typical Danish wind turbine of vintage had a 26 kW generator and a rotor diameter of 10.5 metres. A modern wind turbine has a rotor diameter of 54 metres and a kW generator. It will produce between 2 and 3 million kilowatt hours in a year. This is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 500 to 800 European households.
The latest generation of wind turbines has a 1,000-2,500 kW generator and a 50-80 metre rotor diameter.
In Europe more than 13,000 megawatts of wind power were on-line as of January , covering the average domestic electricity consumption of seven million people. Worldwide 18,000 MW have been installed. This is equivalent to the amount of nuclear power installed worldwide by .

5. Wind Energy is an Advancing Technology
Technological advances in aerodynamics, structural dynamics and micro-meteorology have contributed to a 5 per cent annual increase in the energy yield per square metre wind turbine rotor area (as recorded in Denmark between and ). New technology is continuously being introduced in new wind turbines.
The weight of Danish wind turbines has halved in 5 years, the sound level has halved in 3 years, and the annual energy output per turbine has increased 100-fold in 15 years.
Check the guided tour section on research and development.

6. Wind Energy is Inexpensive
Wind energy has become the least expensive renewable energy technology in existence.
Since the energy contents of the wind varies with the cube (i.e. the third power of the wind speed, the economics of wind energy depends heavily on how windy the site is. In addition, there are generally economies of scale when building wind parks of many turbines.
Today, according to the Danish electrical power companies, the energy cost to society (the social cost) per kilowatt-hour of electricity from wind is the same as for new coal-fired power stations fitted with smoke scrubbing equipment, i.e. around 0.04 USD per kWh for an average European site.
R&D studies in Europe and the US point to a further fall in energy costs from wind of some 10 to 20 per cent between now and the year .
Read more about the economics of wind energy in the guided tour.

7. Wind Energy is Safe
Wind energy leaves no harmful emissions or residue in the environment.
Wind Energy has a proven safety record.
Fatal accidents in the wind industry have been related to construction and maintenance work only. Read more about wind turbine safety in the Guided Tour section.

8. Wind Turbines are Reliable
Wind turbines only produce energy when the wind is blowing, and energy production varies with each gust of wind.
The variable forces acting on a wind turbine throughout its expected lifetime of 120,000 operating hours could be expected to exert significant tear and wear on the machine. Turbines therefore have to be built to very exacting industrial standards.
High quality modern wind turbines have an availability factor above 98 per cent, i.e. the turbines are on average operational and ready to run during more than 98 per cent of the hours of the year. This availability factor is beyond any other electricity generating technology.
Modern wind turbines only require a maintenance check every six months.

9. Wind Energy Uses Land Resources Sparingly
Wind turbines and access roads occupy less than one per cent of the area in a typical wind park. The remaining 99 per cent of the land can be used for farming or grazing, as usual.
Since wind turbines extract energy from the wind, there is less energy in the wind shade of a turbine (and more turbulence) than in front of it.
In a wind park, turbines generally have to be spaced between three and nine rotor diameters apart in order not to shade one another too much. (Five to seven rotor diameters is the most commonly used spacing).
If there is one particular prevailing wind direction, e.g. West, turbines may be spaced very closely in the direction at a right angle to that direction, (i.e. North-South).
Whereas a wind turbine uses 36 square metres, or 0. hectares to produce between 1.2 and 1.8 million kilowatt hours per year, a typical biofuel plant would require 154 hectares of willow forest to produce 1.3 million kilowatt hours per year. Solar cells would require an area of 1.4 hectares to produce the same amount of electricity per year.

10. Wind Energy Can and Must Respect Landscape Values
Wind turbines obviously have to be highly visible, since they must be located in windy, open terrain to be economic.
Better design, careful choice of paint colours - and careful visualisation studies before siting is decided - can improve the visual impact of wind farms dramatically.
Some people prefer lattice towers instead of tubular steel towers, because they make the tower itself less visible.
There are no objective guidelines, however. Much depends on the landscape and the match with architectural traditions in the area.
Since wind turbines are visible in any case, it is usually a good idea to use them to emphasise natural or man-made features in the landscape. See some examples in the guided tour section on wind turbines in the landscape.
Like other man-made structures, well designed wind turbines and wind parks can give interesting perspectives and furnish the landscape with new architectural values.
Wind turbines have been a feature of the cultural landscape of Europe for more than 800 years.

11. Wind Projects Minimise Ecological Impact
Wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm developers have by now substantial experience in minimising the ecological impact of construction work in sensitive areas such as moors, or mountains, or when building wind farms in offshore locations.
Restoring the surrounding landscape to its original state after construction has become a routine task for developers.
After the useful life of a wind farm has elapsed, foundations can be reused or removed completely.
The scrap value of a wind turbine can normally cover the costs of restoring its site to its initial state.

12. Wind Turbines Coexist Peacefully with Wildlife
Deer and cattle habitually graze under wind turbines, and sheep seek shelter around them.
While birds tend to collide with man-made structures such as electrical power lines, masts, or buildings, they are very rarely affected directly by wind turbines.
A recent Danish study suggests that the impact of overhead power lines leading electricity away from wind farms have far greater impact on bird mortality than the wind farms themselves.
Falcons are in fact nesting and breeding in cages attached to two Danish wind turbines!
Studies from the Netherlands, Denmark, and the US show that the total impact on birds from wind farms is negligible compared to the impact from road traffic.
Read more about birds and wind turbines in the Guided Tour.

13. Wind Turbines Require Careful Siting
The energy content of the wind varies with the cube, (i.e. the third power) of the wind speed. Twice as much wind yields eight times as much energy. Manufacturers and wind farm developers therefore take extreme care in siting wind turbines in as windy areas as possible.
The roughness of the terrain, i.e. the terrain surface, its contours, and even the presence of buildings, trees, plants, and bushes affect the local wind speed. Very rough terrain or nearby large obstacles may create turbulence which may decrease energy production and increase tear and wear on the turbines.
Calculating the annual energy production from a wind turbine is quite a complex task: It requires detailed maps of the area (up to three kilometres in the prevailing wind directions), and accurate meteorological wind measurements for a at least a one year period. You may read more in the Guided Tour section on wind energy resources.
Qualified advice from experienced manufacturers or consulting firms is therefore essential for the economic success of a wind project.

14. Wind Turbines can be Quite Economic in Inland Areas
Although wind conditions near seashores tend to be ideal for wind projects, it is indeed possible to find highly economic inland areas for wind turbines.
As the wind passes over a hill, or through a mountain pass, it becomes compressed and speeds up significantly. Rounded hilltops with a wide view in the prevailing wind directions are therefore ideal as wind turbine sites. See the Guided Tour on speed up effects.
Tall wind turbine towers is a way of increasing the energy yield of a wind turbine, since wind speed usually increases significantly with height above ground level.
In low wind areas, manufacturers may be able to supply special wind turbine versions with large rotors compared to the size of the electrical generator.
Such machines will reach peak production at relatively low wind speeds, although they will waste some of the energy potential of high winds. Manufacturers are increasingly optimising their machines to local wind conditions worldwide.

15. Wind Energy Integrates Well into the Electrical Grid
The major drawback of wind power is variability.
In large electrical grids, however, consumers' demand also varies, and electricity generating companies have to keep spare capacity running idle in case a major generating unit breaks down.
If a power company can handle varying consumer demand, it can technically also handle the "negative electricity consumption" from wind turbines.
The more wind turbines on the grid, the more short term fluctuations from one turbine will cancel out the fluctuations from another.
In the Western part of Denmark, more than 25 per cent of the electricity supply today comes from wind during windy winter nights.
Read more in the Guided Tour section on wind energy in the electrical grid

16. Wind Energy is a Scalable Technology
Wind energy can be used in all sorts of applications - from small battery chargers in lighthouses or remote dwellings to industrial scale turbines of 1.5 megawatts capable of supplying the equivalent of the electricity consumption of one thousand families.
Other interesting and highly economic applications include wind energy used in combination with diesel powered backup generators in several small, isolated electrical grids throughout the world.
Desalination plants in island communities in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea is another recent application.

17. Wind Energy is an Ideal Developing Country Technology
Although wind turbine design has become a high tech industry, wind turbines can easily be installed in developing countries, and serviced and maintained locally. Turbine manufacturers provide training courses for personnel.
Installation of wind turbines provides jobs in the local community, and manufacturers will often manufacture heavy parts of the turbine, e.g. towers, locally once the installation rate reaches a certain level.
Wind turbines require no subsequent expensive provision of fuel, a major stumbling block for several other electricity generating technologies in developing areas.
India has become one of the large wind energy nations of the world with substantial local manufacturing. P. R. of China is presently taking the lead in East Asia.

18. Wind Energy Provides Jobs
The wind industry today () provides more than 50,000 jobs worldwide. The wind industry is becoming more multinational, as the industry matures and more manufacturing is established in new markets.
In Denmark alone, more than 15,000 people make a living from wind energy, designing and manufacturing wind turbines, components, or rendering consultancy and engineering services.
Today employment in the Danish wind industry is larger than e.g. the fishing industry.
The Danish production of wind turbines demands another 5,000 jobs in other countries which erect wind turbines or manufacture turbine components such as generators and gearboxes.
Read more on the page on employment in the guided tour.

19. Wind Energy is Popular
Opinion polls in several European countries, Denmark, Germany, Holland, and the UK, show that more than 70 per cent of the population is in favour of using more wind energy in the electricity supply.
People who live near wind turbines are on average even more favourable towards wind energy, with a score of more than 80 per cent in favour of wind energy.
In Denmark, more than 100,000 families own shares in one of the 6,000 modern wind turbines scattered throughout the country.
More than 80 per cent of the wind power capacity in Denmark is owned by private individuals or wind co-operatives.

20. Wind Energy is a Rapidly Growing Market
Since , growth rates in the wind turbine market have been around 40 per cent per annum, and growth rates of 20 per cent per annum are expected for the next ten years.
Currently there are some 40 wind turbine manufacturers worldwide. Around half of the turbines in the world come from Danish manufacturers.
Wind energy is gaining ground in developed and developing countries alike.
In developed countries wind energy is mostly in demand because of its pollution-free qualities.
In developing countries its popularity is linked to the fact that turbines can be installed quickly, and require no subsequent fuel supplies.
The wind turbine industry is now a 3.5 billion USD industry with an extremely bright future, particularly if environmentally friendly energy policies gain ground internationally.
Read more in the publications section of this web site.

21. The Danish Wind Turbine Industry is the World's Largest
In Danish wind turbine companies supplied 2,500 megawatts of new generating capacity, equivalent to a medium-sized nuclear power station.
Danish manufacturers had a 50 per cent share of the world market for wind turbines in .
Development of modern wind energy for electricity generation has a long tradition in Denmark. It began in more than a hundred years ago, in . Read more about this exciting technology history in the Pictures section of this web site.

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