A top official with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), Steven Sawyer, predicts in a recent interview with Reuters that China will soon to start to dominate global production of wind power turbines:
“We’d expect that the domestic Chinese manufacturers will have an annual production capacity of about 10 gigawatts per year…by the end of 2009,” he told Reuters on Tuesday. GWEC represents more than 1,500 wind firms in more than 50 nations.
Ten gigawatts would be more than half of the current world market — in 2007, 17-19 gigawatts of wind energy capacity were added worldwide, raising the cumulative total to above 90 gigawatts. [Full Text]
[Image: A rendering of the top-of-the-line turbine sold by Gold Wind, China’s top wind turbine manufacturer, from the company’s website.]