Record-Breaking Year for Wind Power

In 2012 wind energy reached a new high, increasing its total global capacity to 282,430MW. It’s growth is not being affected by the economic crisis, and EGP is playing a central role.

The GWEC, the Global Wind Energy Council, has revealed that 2012 was a record-breaking year for windpower, with 44,711 megawatts of new capacity installed, up 10 percent compared with 2011. The total global capacity has increased to 282.430 MW, an 18.5 percent increase over last year.

Windpower is not being affected by the economic crisis and Enel Green Power, which focuses on emerging countries but has a solid presence in Europe, is playing a central role in its growth, with a 770MW (21.75 percent) increase since the end of 2011. EGP operates worldwide with 4310.87MW of installed windpower capacity in Europe and the Americas.

According to the strategic plan 2012-2016, Enel Green Power is planning on producing almost half of its energy from wind by 2016, and in this four-year period windpower will receive 57 percent of its total planned investment.

Over the last few months, EGP has connected windpower plants across Europe, with the 28MW Bagaladi Motta Montebello in Italy, the 18MW Agreda in Spain and three new wind farms in Romania: Elcomex EOL (Zephir I), Targusor (Zephir II) and Gebelesis, bringing the total capacity to 206 MW and a production of about 560 million kilowatt-hours a year.

EGP manages 997MW of installed capacity in the Americas, mainly in North America, with about 830MW in the United States and Canada. However, most of the plants that will be built in the medium term will be in the emerging countries of Latin America, such as Brazil, where EGP will install 460MW of wind energy by 2016, Chile (340 MW) and Mexico, where in 2012 the Bii Nee Stipa II e III plants were put into service, with a total capacity of 144 MW. These countries, which have plentiful renewable energy resources, extremely high rates of economic and population growth, will very likely play a central role in the development of windpower over the next few years.

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EGP central for wind in Europe