Man has harnessed the power of the wind for thousands of years to advance industrial and social development, from the windmills used in the 7th century for irrigation pumping and grain milling, to the early wind turbines developed in the UK and the US in the 1800s to generate electricity for farms and homesteads. Now in the 21st century, against a backdrop of dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, global focus on wind energy has reached an unprecedented intensity.
The Belgium-based Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), a wind industry trade association providing a representative forum for the global wind energy sector on an international level, says wind energy is the only power generation technology that can deliver the necessary cuts in CO2 in the critical period up to 2020, when greenhouse gases must peak and begin to decline to avoid harmful climate change. The council believes the present 158.5 gigawatts (GW) of installed global wind capacity will save us from releasing more than 210 million tons of CO2 every year.
In 2005, researchers at Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project conducted an evaluation of the global potential of wind power, using five years of data from the US National Climatic Data Center and the Forecasts Systems Laboratory. After collecting measurements from 7,500 surface and 500 balloon-launch monitoring stations to determine global wind speeds at 80 m above ground level, they found that nearly 13 percent had an average wind speed above 6.9 m per second, sufficient for economical wind power generation. The report concluded that sufficient wind exists to supply all the world’s energy needs, although many practical barriers would have to be overcome to realize this potential.
After collecting measurements from 7,500 surface and 500 balloon-launch monitoring stations to determine global wind speeds at 80 m above ground level, they found that nearly 13 percent had an average wind speed above 6.9 m per second, sufficient for economical wind power generation.
The GWEC says the growth of the market for wind energy is being driven today by a number of factors, including: the wider context of energy supply and demand; the rising profile of environmental issues, especially climate change; and the impressive improvements in the technology itself. These factors have combined in many regions of the world to encourage political support for wind energy development.
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