AWEA estimate of global power needs

[Jed Rothwell]

See the document I cited before:

http://www.awea.org/news/03-04-o5-GlobalWindEnergyMarkets.pdf.

Quote:

"According to the report Wind Force 12 (3), boosting investment in wind energy to a level where it would
provide 12% of world electricity generation by 2020 would result in annual reductions of 1,813 million tons of CO2 in 2020 from 1,245,000 MW of wind energy installed."

I presume that means 1.3 million MW nameplate capacity, or 415,000 MW real. That comes to 3,842 NPRE (the units I invented equaling an average U.S. nuclear plant actual output). Earlier I estimated the total world needs ~2,000 NPRE. That was a very crude estimate; 3,842 is better. (Actually I am pleased I was within a factor of two.)

With today's power buffering technology the power companies say 12% is a reasonable target for wind. Above that, they would have difficulty with load-balancing and during times when the wind does not blow. With something like hydrogen or advanced low-cost batteries they could do better. In some parts of the world, things like reversible hydro storage would already allow a higher percent of the power from wind.

Denmark has so much excess wind power during winter nights they are having difficulty selling it on the European grid. You can see that above a certain level power buffering will become as important to the industry as advances in wind turbine technology.The latest goal in Denmark is to cover 50% of Danish electricity consumption by 2025. See:

http://www.windpower.org/en/core.htm

Wind now generates roughly as much electricity as the entire world consumed in 1920. There is so little mention of this in the American press that American newspaper readers might be excused for thinking that wind is only a marginal industry that cannot meet global levels of energy. It would be nice to see ABC news report something like: "Last year the equivalent of three average U.S. nuclear plants were added to the world's electric grid . . ."

There are presently 18 NPRE of wind worldwide. Wind power growth is exponential, with an increase in the increase of ~15% per year for the last few decades. If this keeps up, wind capacity will surpass nuclear capacity a generation from now. There are presently 440 nuclear power plants in the world, and 103 in the U.S. The world average size is a little smaller than the U.S. average. See:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

Wind is considerably less polluting than nuclear fission, because it does not require the mining and refining uranium. Even if we solve the nuclear waste problem, wind will still be cleaner. It does produce some pollution, during the manufacture and later the disposal of the equipment.

- Jed