According to a report from Business Communications, ‘Renewable Bulk Power Sources: World Markets for Large Wind Turbines’, $5.5 billion was invested in new large wind turbines worldwide in 2001. That level remained steady through 2002, but development is expected to rise dramatically from 2003 in the USA, as backlogged and new projects are brought to completion ahead of the expiration date of the Federal Production Tax Credit.
Large markets are opening and expanding in France, the UK and Australia, while high growth markets in the EU continue to expand. High growth markets are also developing in eastern Europe and north Africa. The report said that it believes that the global wind turbine market will grow at an average annual growth rate of 24.3 per cent, and will be worth $16 billion by 2007.
1MWe and larger turbines are now produced in Denmark, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the USA. New factories are being constructed in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.
Continued strong expansion of the large wind turbine industry is driven by fixed price feed-in tariffs, renewable portfolio standards (RPS), green power markets, pollution offsets, Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) projects, renewable obligations, clean energy funds, executive orders at the federal and state levels, tradeable renewable energy credits (RECs and TRECs), competition in restructured electricity markets, and cost.
The installed world capacity of large wind turbines will be over 110 GWe by 2007, but will account for less than 3 per cent of the total world electricity generating capacity. However, new large wind capacity will account for almost 24 per cent of all new power installed worldwide in 2007.
Permit applications have been filed for over 1 GWe of offshore wind farms, requiring total investments of over $1.5 billion. The offshore projects are expected to produce power at prices below those of fossil- fired power plants.
