China Surpasses U.S. as The World's Fastest-Growing Wind Energy Market

China started to make the turbines for itself instead of us.

"We’ll get ‘em next year." How? Who is going to make wind turbines for us?

Population 700+million more than us, yeah I think its OK for them to surpass us in wind power. But as a total percentage of energy production we're much higher.

@ thor0997 You raise a good point, and the answer is in the DOE report should you be interested in the hard numbers. These numbers are also a mixed bag for the U.S. It's important to remember that GE is still the second-leading turbine producer in the world (again, this is all according to DOE), so the U.S. isn't out of the race. There are a lot of smaller mfgrs that are gaining share in the U.S. too, some domestic, some European or Japanese, etc. What is significant is that in 2009, the U.S. installed its first Chinese-manufactured turbines. China, for the most part, was consuming its own turbine production in past years, fueling its own growth in that sector. But in 2009, they broke into the U.S. market (and they're naturally looking to expand into the wider world, at the expense of GE/Vestas/etc.). So your concerns from an economic standpoint are certainly valid.

However, I'm sure that even if our green manufacturing economy doesn't take off as planned, China will gladly sell us some of their green hardware.

^ GE will make them

Wind power produces no net energy, spews more GHG's than it saves and is a waste of time and treasure in the fight to sidetrack the as little as ten years away peak/global warming crisis.

Wind power is pushed by Big Oil interests like T Boone Pickens so they can sell more Natural gas. It can't work without enormous subsidies.

It has worked very well for Big Oil as the figures show, buying the politicians so they can get the subsidies, then the politician telling the great unwashed about all the "clean" energy it provides.

Fortunately we ran out of money and the subsidies have slowed down with a huge drop in planned wind farm development.

It can easily be shown that we effectively get no net energy from wind as it has to be load balanced with dirty radioactive radon and GHG spewing low efficiency natural gas plant. Much less money and GHG's to have just built high efficiency gas plant itstead.

Latest big wind farm - Cape wind - tariff Cape wind $20B/Gw 24 cents a kwh going to 34 cents over 15 years latest tariff agreement. Google it.

Nuclear

Current American nuclear cost is 1.86 cents a kwh.

The Japanese with a much better regulatory system than our own and higher wages build American designed reactors for $1.4B/Gw less than 2 cents a kwh in four years or less.

Real cost of American nuclear power built by American engineers in five years or less overseas for public power companies instead of the attorney’s, corrupt private power companies and pet politicians, and greedy wall street financiers taking ten years at four times the cost to build the same nuclear plants in the US.

AP1000 build $1.2B/Gw 2007, 1.3 cents a kwh

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0

Budget cost South carolina Summer 2 3 $4.5/Gw 4.7 cents a kwh if built by public power - bonneville or TVA

http://www.scana.com/en/investor-relations/nuclear-financial-information/default.htm

Crrently there are 57 nuclear reactors being built around the world, another 140 have been ordered and a further 150 had been proposed for 2020. Mass production or factory production of reactor modules is already under way in China.

There is one reactor on order in the US.

20 years from now we will be paying 50 cents a kwh for worthless off all the time GHG spewing wind energy we aren't getting while the Japanese, Indians and Chinese are laughing at us and our third world economy as they cruise along on 100% reliable zero GHG 24/7 1 cent a kwh mass produced nuclear energy.

@sethdayal
Citations please. Anyone can make up statistics. The only way for that long angry comment of yours to hold any weight is if you can back it up with crediable sources. Who says that wind power produces no net energy?

@ sethdayal: Makes complete sense. Nuclear derived energy is the most reliable and efficient source of energy we currently have and it's only the fears of the nation that hold back the technology.

I think wind power produces net energy. However, the article's tone -- "alas, the U.S. is the world's wind power leader no more ... But that’s really no reason for America to get down on its renewable energy ambitions ... America and China should be fostering healthy competition when it comes to going green ..." -- is, I think, witless and lickspittle.

If the competition were how quickly each nation can withdraw subsidies and cancel renewable portfolio standards, that would be a race worth winning; but wind turbines kill workers, and here in Canada one recently killed a child, and on July 30, Ontario's wind turbine production was 98 percent short of the "wind capacity" that the article mentions. It tends to be that way in heat waves; that is why the natural gas interests LOVE wind turbines. Killing workers and children is, of course, just a slightly bad day at the office, for them.

Besides the fact that I think that wind-power is necessarily the way to go right now...

I cannot stand it when they try to spin the actual facts about a death on a particular story.

Each and every death due to wind turbines has been due to poor practices when work is done on a turbine.
Never once has a wind turbine reached out and killed a person as you make it sound GRLCowan:

"and here in Canada one recently killed a child"

And I am seriously baffled on why they would build these wind turbines in a residential community.

This really has more to do with stupidity, lack of proper training and improper work/maintenance procedures than with any real sense of these turbines being dangerous.

Oops...missed a word there:

"Besides the fact that I think that wind-power is NOT necessarily the way to go right now..."

Nuclear is not the solution. The waste are a big problem and accidents like Chernobyl in Ukraine and Tree mile Island in Pensylvania have long term impact on surronding population. More nuclear means more risk of accidents.

And by the way uranium is not that plentiful ressource.

"This really has more to do with stupidity, lack of proper training and improper work/maintenance procedures than with any real sense of these turbines being dangerous."

Ah, so wind turbines are dangerous only when worked with by humans. Unlike you-know-what, the energy source that, in North America, has taken hundreds of billions of dollars away from the oil and gas interests, and has endured stupidity, lack of proper training, and improper work/maintenance procedures -- and despite all this, has, as yet, not harmed a single child.

No net energy produced looky here

Google wind-integration-realities-part-i

Nuclear waste is really stored nuclear fuel.The world's current supply of nuclear waste covering a football field 40 feet deep could power the world for hundreds of years either reprocessed into MOX fuel for current generation reactors, or burned in the new GenIV units like India's new 500 MW plant. Areva claims MOX fuel is already as cheap as enriched uranium.

Chernobyl is a physically impossible event in a sixties + vintage reactor. Sixties tech TMI the worst case accident possible with a sixties + vintage reactor barely even scarred the reactor vessel much less hurt anybody.

Nuclear has the best industrial safety record in the world. Every year misguided not so "renewable" religious zealots defer the coal to nuclear conversion another three million folks die worldwide from coal pollution - a fact not some fantasy apocalyptic Chernobyl raving.

MOX is just a cheap as uranium and we could power the world for hundreds of years just on the current stock of nuclear waste.

GRLCowan...hit a nerve there, did I?

You are telling me that it ISNT stupid to put these wind turbines in a residential area?
I cant speak for you, but I personally do not want to live next to any power-generating facility.
At least not within a reasonable distance...
Besides, Canada has large tracts of land where they could have built turbines that are no where near homes.

My point is that with all new technology, it takes time to establish proper safety measures and procedures.
Especially structures on such a large scale.

I was not proclaiming that any other way was better or less dangerous. Just that the stories tend to miss the point that a turbine just doing its job it generally safe.
Only when people have been working on it, have accidents happened and usually because of the reasons that I listed.

And as Seth pointed out...nuclear power actually has a very good track record. It has been in use for decades by many countries and has many standard industry-wide safety policies and practices in place to prevent issues.

Can things go wrong? Sure, due to a lot of reasons, but generally, you dont get someone from Devry working on a reactor.

wind power is nice on paper but when it comes off the paper it uses to much space it makes little power and it needs a stable wind. in our world space is a limited thing and when you can build a nuclear plant that is small in land used and makes loads of power and works 24/7. the only problems with nuclear is the start up cost and the waste.

Limited space? I didn't know we're running out of space on this planet. We've got space to dump our toxic chemicals, got space to place oil rigs in, got space to mine large coal fields, got space to shovel oil shale, got space to build big coal power plants but no space for wind power. We better move to a larger planet.

My apologies if I offend anyone.

Wind is only somewhat practical in some areas.

Also, I'm fairly sick of people trying to turn Three Mile Island into some mushroom cloud. Besides, look at the inovation in ANY other tech that has taken place over the past 40 years. High risk surgeries are now minimally invasive. Horrific car crashes are now not uncommon to walk away from. Why do we assume that nuclear power is so rigged together, out dated and dangerous?

Tricky stats as usual. See wind mill per capita and energy use. US and China are dwarfs in this matter and will lead pollution rate also the next 200 years. Point here is catch free wind and squeeze money with it, gangsters of depth and promise.