Wind energy could provide up to 12 percent of the world’s total power demand by 2020 and up to 22 percent by 2030, reveals a joint study by the Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace International.
The report projects that approximately 1,000 gigawatts of wind energy generating capacity will be installed by 2020, which will be enough to offset as much as 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. These emission cuts would represent 5,075 percent of the cumulative emission reduction targets that industrialized countries pledged by 2020 in Copenhagen.
By 2030, a total of 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced through 2,300 GW of wind power capacity.
“Wind power can make a massive contribution to global electricity production and to decarbonising the power sector, but we need political commitment to make this happen.” said Steve Sawyer, the wind council’s secretary general.
The wind industry is on its way to becoming a lucrative sector in the renewable energy market and a significant factor in economic development. The report states that the wind sector is responsible for creating over 600,000 direct and indirect jobs, and this total could skyrocket to over 3 million by 2030.
“In 2010 the 600,000 workers of the wind industry put up a new wind turbine every 30 minutes – one in three of those turbines was erected in China,” said Sven Teske, senior energy expert at Greenpeace International.
“By 2030, the market could be three times bigger than today, leading to a 202 billion euro ($282.46 billion) investment. A new turbine every seven minutes – that’s our goal,” he continued.
China is currently the largest wind energy market in the world. A separate report from the nonprofit organization Pew Charitable Trusts reveals that the country invested $34.6 billion into its renewable energy industry in 2009, with wind investments accounting for a majority of the total.
The country also installed 12.2 GW of wind generating capacity last year, which is upheld by a fixed-rate feed-in-tariff, and this figure is expected to increase tenfold by 2020.
