Energy and the Financial System by Roger Boyd

Author:Roger Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

3.7 Wind Could Provide a Useful Percentage of Energy Needs

Wind power produces electricity, which is forecast to be the fastest growing energy carrier over the next decades. With BP forecasting a growth rate of 2.6 % per year [25], global electricity demand will be about 30 % larger in 2022 than in 2012. The International Energy Authority has forecast an even greater increase in electricity demand over the next couple of decades [26]. Thus, any increase in electricity supply from wind will go first to meet the increased demand, and only after that has been met will any fossil fuel sources be displaced. Wind turbines are dependent on there being wind and as that is not always the case their actual output never equals the stated capacity to produce electricity. The capacity factor, the actual percentage of the capacity that will be produced over a given year, averages about 25 % globally. Thus, forecasts of installed capacity can be very misleading as a gauge of how much electricity will actually be produced by wind turbine installations.

Even after the rapid growth of wind power over the past years it still represents only about 1 % of global energy supplies in 2012. Wind energy capacity has been growing at approximately 30 % per year for the past fifteen years [26], but it would be unrealistic to expect it to keep growing at that rate. As the installed base grows adding another 30 % requires bigger and bigger additions. For example if the 30 % growth continues for the next 5 years, the installed base would quadruple in size, with three times more capacity added in the next 5 years than had been added in the previous 15. For such growth to continue for the following 5 years, twelve times more capacity would be required than that in place at the end of 2012. This is plainly unrealistic without the impetus of emergency actions taken by governments to move rapidly to non-fossil fuel energy sources. Some of the previous growth has also been dependent upon government subsidies, but many austerity enthralled governments are starting to reduce such subsidies. In addition, as the scale of wind implementations grows the cost of government incentives will grow in parallel creating a greater and greater pressure to reduce such subsidies.

Even wind energy supporters such as the Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace , using their more optimistic scenarios, assume future growth rates of the wind power sector will start at about 20 %, and then decline to 6 % by 2030. The resulting share of electricity supply from wind energy, taking into account increases in demand, will be between 14 % and 25 % by 2030 for the two most optimistic scenarios. Even at the high estimate, all of the increase in output would be taken by increased demand rather than the replacement of fossil fuel sources. If the dreams of millions of electric cars were to be realized increases in electricity demand would be much greater, reducing the overall share of wind energy and the possibility of fossil fuels ultimately being displaced by it .

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