wind

There is a flourishing global market for wind power, and the development costs are expected to fall by 30% on land and 50% for offshore installations.

The world’s largest wind turbines, several of which have been installed in Germany, have a capacity of 6 MW. Favourable policy incentives in Europe have driven the global market. In 2009, however, more than 70% of the annual market was outside Europe and this trend is likely to continue.

There have been supply constraints following a boom in demand for wind power technology and this means that the cost of new systems has increased recently. The industry is now resolving those bottlenecks in the supply chain through expansion of production capacities, for example in China.

employment in wind energy Under the Energy [R]evolution scenario, wind would provide 15% of total electricity generation by 2030, and reach the same share in the advanced version just after 2020. Jobs in this sector would grow to 1.7 million in 2015 and to over 2 million in the Advanced scenario. By 2030 in the basic [R]evolution scenario jobs would fall back to 1.4 million (1.7 million in the advanced version). Under the Reference scenario, wind jobs reach only 0.5 million in 2015, and fall back to 0.4 million in 2030.

The effect of decline factors on wind power jobs is less marked, because the technology is further along the commercialisation path. If decline factors were not used, wind jobs would be 0.7 – 0.8 million higher in 2030 in the [R]evolution scenarios.