Wind Powering
America is a commitment to dramatically increase the use of wind
energy in the United States. This initiative will establish new
sources of income for American farmers, Native Americans, and
other rural landowners, and meet the growing demand for clean
sources of electricity.
Through Wind
Powering America, the United States will achieve targeted regional
economic development, enhance our power generation options, protect
the local environment, and increase our energy and national security.
Wind power
could provide 20% of U.S. electricity needs by 2030, according
to a new DOE report. The report, titled "20% Wind Energy by
2030: Increasing Wind Energy's Contribution to U.S. Electricity
Supply," identifies the steps that need to be addressed to
reach the 20% goal, including reducing the cost of wind technologies,
building new transmission infrastructure, and enhancing domestic
manufacturing capability. For more information, see the DOE press release,
the 20% Wind Energy
by 2030 Web site, and the full text of the report (PDF
4.0 MB). Download
Adobe Reader.
After
reaching 1,000 MW of wind energy in 1985, it took more than
a decade for wind to reach the 2,000-MW mark in 1999. Since
then, installed capacity has grown fivefold. Today, U.S. wind
energy installations produce enough electricity on a typical
day to power the equivalent of over 2.5 million homes. You
can view
a larger version of this animation or you can view
individual years.
Wind Powering
America concentrates its efforts in "stuck" markets, i.e., avoids
investing resources in markets that are fully commercial and active;
develops innovative pilot projects; replicates successes; and
develops and disseminates targeted information, analyses, and
tools — WPA augments the efforts of DOE's wind research program,
the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), and other wind related
organizations to identify and address gaps in technical information
and tools needed for its program areas. Examples include: development
and access to simplified spreadsheet tools for initial analyses
of wind project economics and economic development impacts, development
and distribution of state specific wind maps and small wind application
guidebooks, and publication of a brochure that focuses on wind
opportunities, case studies, and economics for rural electric
coops. Visit our state pages or use the navigation to the left
to access each of these resources.
Wind resource
maps help to evaluate whether an area of interest should be further
explored.
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