FRANKFURT, Germany, 2004-05-19 (Refocus Weekly) Offshore windfarms will capture Euro 9 billion of investment in the next six years, boosting installed capacity to 5,000 MW from the current level of 280 MW.
“There are no technical, economic or resource barriers to supplying 12% of
the world's electricity needs with wind power alone by 2020, and this against
the challenging backdrop of a projected two-thirds increase of electricity
demand by that date,” says the European Wind Energy Association in its ‘Wind
Force 12' update. “Unlike some other ‘solutions’ to clean energy and
climate protection, wind power does not need to be invented, nor is there need
to wait for any magical 'breakthrough'; it is ready for global implementation
now.”
National policies must establish legally binding targets for renewables, provide
defined and stable returns for investors, introduce electricity market reforms
which include the removal of electricity sector barriers to renewables and
market distortions, halt subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear power sources, and
internalize the social and environmental costs of polluting energy, it
recommends.
On the international front, the Kyoto Protocol must be adopted, there must be
reform of export credit agencies, multilateral development banks and
international finance institutions, and there must be a “defined and
increasing percentage of overall energy sector lending directed to renewable
energy projects” with a rapid phaseout of support for “conventional,
polluting energy projects.”
“Wind power is successful today and, with a stronger green light from
governments, this success story can expand worldwide,” says the report
produced by EWEA and Greenpeace. “Wind power already installed throughout the
world generates the equivalent electricity needs of 19 million European
households; the wind industry can increase its sales tenfold by the year 2020,
from the present Euro 8 billion to 80 billion.”
Last year, 8,000 MW of wind turbines were installed around the world, but the
success of the industry has been “largely created by the efforts of a handful
of countries” led by Germany, Spain and Denmark. “It is obvious that if
other countries matched these efforts, the impact would be far greater,” the
report notes.
“The fact that just three countries have created the bulk of the progress to
date underlines the fact that today's technology is merely the tip of the
iceberg, and a huge potential remains untapped,” it explains. “Wind power is
capable of continuing its successful history over the next two decades if a
positive political and regulatory framework is implemented, one that removes the
obstacles and market distortions that currently constrain the industry’s real
potential.”
“Targets for renewables act as a catalyst for governments to develop the
necessary framework conditions for investment in renewable energy technologies,”
it adds. “But although targets are an important first step in developing the
clean energy sources of tomorrow that will contribute substantially to climate
protection, they must be followed by concrete political action.”
Wind Force 12 is a feasibility study into the potential for wind energy to
supply 12% of the world’s electricity by 2020. In the process of installing
1,200,000 MW of wind turbines, two million jobs would be created and 10,700
megatonne of CO2 would be displaced from emission, it estimates.