Wind Power Passes 100 Gigawatt in EU

By Mat McDermott

Harvey Barrison/CC BY-SA 2.0

An important milestone (kilometer-marker?) has been passed in the European Union: The European Wind Energy Association reports that there is now over 100 gigawatts of wind power installed.

EWEA points out the increasing rate of growth of wind power in the EU, noting that it took twenty years for the first 10 GW to be installed, but over the subsequent 13 years 90 GW was installed.

Making the usual sort of comparisons, EWEA says that 100 GW of wind power produces a similar amount of electricity as 62 coal power plants, 52 gas power plants, or 39 nuclear power plants.

As for the increasing amount of wind power, up through 2011, EWEA shares the chart below:

© EWEA

Source: Treehugger