April 14th, 2009
Wind dying down...for the nonce
Not surprisingly the once-booming wind industry is feeling the effects of the global economic dive. Nothing wrong with the world’s supply of wind, but there is a shortage of CapEx money and capital of all kinds. Emerging Energy Research (EER) concludes there’ll be major declines in wind energy construction this year. They expect a 24% decline in the U.S. and 19% decline year-to-year in Europe.
Going against the rest of the global slump, China will see an incease of over 50% of added megawatt capacity from wind farms added this year compared to last.
Further down the road EER projects there’ll be a wind energy boom in the U.S., driven partly by new federal laws and policies. Also some states are pushing utilties to use more renewable generation sources. In Europe EER sees the various large utilities becloming more dominant in the wind generation field, meaning long-term capitsal supplies should be sufficient to restart growth.
A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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