Wind power in the United States
The U.S. Department of Energy’s 2008 report "20% Wind Energy by 2030" envisioned that wind power could supply 20% of all U.S. electric power, which included a contribution of 4% to the nation’s total electric power from offshore wind power. In order to achieve this, however, significant advances in cost, performance and reliability are needed, based on a 2011 report from a coalition of researchers from universities, industry, and government, supported by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. Obtaining 20% from wind requires about 305 GW of wind turbines, an increase of 16 GW/year after 2018, or an average increase of 14.6%/year, and transmission line improvements. Analysts estimate around 25 GW of added US wind power in 2016-18, depending on the Clean Power Plan and PTC extensions. After the current PTC phase-out in 2021, additional wind power capacity is expected to be around 5 GW per year.
In 2015, electric power generation from wind power was 10 percent or more in twelve U.S. states: Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota, Vermont, and Texas.
Iowa, South Dakota, and Kansas each had more than 20 percent of their electric power generation come from wind. Twenty states now have more than five percent of their generation coming from wind.
Low-carbon power
At the end of 2011, worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 238 gigawatts (GW), growing by 40.5 GW of nameplate capacity over the preceding year. Between 2005 and 2010 the average annual growth in new installations was 27.6 percent. According to the World Wind Energy Association, an industry organization, in 2010 wind power generated 430 TWh or about 2.5% of worldwide electricity usage, up from 1.5% in 2008 and 0.1% in 1997. Wind power's share of worldwide electricity usage at the end of 2014 was 3.1%. Several countries have already achieved relatively high levels of penetration, such as 28% of stationary (grid) electricity production in Denmark (2011), 19% in Portugal (2011), 16% in Spain (2011), 14% in Ireland (2010 to 2014) and 8% in Germany (2011). As of 2011, 83 countries around the world were using wind power on a commercial basis.