school energy&environment

Aeolian production worldwide

In the last years we have assisted at an exponential growth of aeolic power installed and production of electricity generated by wind. In 2017 a power of 52 GW has been installed worldwide, a 11% increase if compared to previous year, reaching a total power rising up to 539 GW: biggest contributors were China (188.4 GW), USA (89 GW), Germany (56.1 GW), India (32.8 GW), Spain (23.3 GW), with Europe as a whole covering 30% of world aeolic power. The 84.7% of installed power in the world is located in just ten countries: China, USA, Germany, India, Spain, Great Britain, France, Brazil, Canada and Italy.
Traditionally, since the beginning of aeolic era, the countries that invested and produced more have been Germany, Spain and the USA: Germany has always been the first in the ranking, but in 2011 it was overtaken by China and the United States. In the last years a new important “outsider” has broken through, China, which from 2010 became the first country in the ranking, making it the main emerging country in the wind sector.
In 2017, the greatest effort to incentivize installed wind power came from China, which registered  a 19.7% increase with respect to 2016, and from the USA, which registered  a 7% increase, with a production equal to 16.5% of the world installed power. Italy has always been in the vanguard in this sector and in 2017, it held the honourable 10th position in the classification of installed power, after China, USA, Germany, India, Spain, Great Britain, France, Brazil and Canada.
(Source: Renewables 2018 – Global Status Report; EWEA – Wind in power: 2017 European Statistics)