The USA passed Germany to become world #1 in wind power installations; and China's total capacity doubled for the fourth year in a row. Total worldwide installations in 2008 were more than 27,000MW, dominated by the three main markets in Europe, North America and Asia.
Global wind energy capacity grew by almost 29% last year, even higher than the average over the past decade, to reach total global installations of close to 121GW at the end of 2008. Over 27GW of new wind power generation capacity came online in 2008, 36% more than in 2007. The global wind market for turbine installations in 2008 was worth about € 36.5 billion. The leading markets in terms of new installed capacity in 2008 were the USA and China. New US wind energy installations totalled 8.4GW. With a total installed capacity of 25GW, the USA has now officially overtaken Germany (24GW) as number one in wind power. Close to a third of all new capacity in 2008 was installed on the Asian continent. In particular, the wind energy boom is continuing in China, which once again doubled its installed capacity by adding about 6.3GW, reaching a total of over 12GW. In Europe, almost 8.9GW worth of new wind turbines brought the total generation capacity up to nearly 66GW.
