Wind Another Very Strong Year for U.S. Wind

Soaring U.S. Wind Energy Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, have issued their latest authoritative report on the status of U.S. wind energy. Newly installed turbine capacity increased a whopping 90 percent in 2012, driven in large part by federal subsidies that were expected to expire (but did not). Despite plummeting natural gas prices and wide switching from coal to gas generation, the expansion of wind outstripped gas last year in capacity, though not in expected energy production. Yet when wind is considered as a percentage of total electricity consumption, the United States still ranks only twelfth, with Denmark in first place, Germany in fifth, and the United Kingdom in eighth. Read morehttp://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/wind/another-very-strong-year-for-us-wind