According to the report, these new projects place wind power ‘neck and neck’ with natural gas as the leading source of new electricity generation for the country. Together, the two sources account for about 80% of the new capacity added in the country last year.
Denise Bode, CEO of American Wind Energy Association, said: “The US wind energy industry shattered all installation records in 2009, chalking up the Recovery Act as a historic success in creating jobs, avoiding carbon, and protecting consumers. But US wind turbine manufacturing – the canary in the mine — is down compared to last year’s levels, and needs long-term policy certainty and market pull in order to grow.
“We need to set hard targets, in the form of a national Renewable Electricity Standard , in order to provide the necessary stability for manufacturers to expand their US operations and to seize the historic opportunity we have today to build up a thriving renewable energy industry.”
Early last year, before the Recovery Act (ARRA), the industry anticipated that in 2009 wind power development might drop by as much as 50% from 2008 levels, with equivalent job losses. However, the commitment by the president to create clean energy jobs and the swift implementation of ARRA incentives by the Administration in mid-summer reversed the situation.
AWEA said that the continuing lack of a long-term policy and market signal allowed investment in the manufacturing sector to drop compared to 2008, with one-third fewer wind power manufacturing facilities online, announced and expanded in 2009. The result was net job losses in the manufacturing sector, which were compounded by low orders and high inventory.
Looking forward, the critical Recovery Act manufacturing incentives that were revealed at the start of this year will also need to be supplemented with the targets of a national Renewable Electricity Standard, the report said.
According to the AWEA, with 4,041MW completed, this fourth quarter was the strongest in the year but still lower than the fourth quarter of 2008. The 9,922MW installed last year expand the nation’s wind plant fleet by 39% and bring total wind power generating capacity in the US to over 35,000MW.
The five-year average annual growth rate for the industry is now 39%, up from 32% between 2003 and 2008. America’s wind power fleet will avoid an estimated 62 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, and will conserve approximately 20 billion gallons of water annually, which would otherwise be withdrawn for steam or cooling in conventional power plants.
