by Brianna Crandall — March 16, 2015—In support of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to diversify the nation’s power supplies, the U.S. Department Energy (DOE) has just released a new report looking at the future of wind power through 2050 and the economic benefits that come with a robust wind industry. The report confirms that with technological advancements driving projected cost reductions, in combination with continued siting and transmission development, wind power can be economically deployed to provide renewable power in all 50 states.
The report highlights the importance of wind in the nation’s energy portfolio and how critical it is to advance wind’s position in the energy marketplace to maintain the nation’s existing wind manufacturing infrastructure and economic benefits. The report includes a roadmap that defines actions needed to realize the substantial economic and social benefits of a robust wind energy future. Through continued cost reductions and further investments in wind energy systems, wind power is projected to be directly competitive with conventional energy technologies within the next decade.
In 2013, an estimated total of more than 50,000 American jobs were supported by wind investments. The report projects that wind could support more than 600,000 jobs by 2050 in industries such as construction, engineering, transportation, manufacturing, operations, maintenance, and supporting services.
The report also highlights the public health and environmental benefits of wind today and into the future. As a clean energy source, wind power could displace more than 12.3 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, equating to a global economic value of $400 billion. Additionally, growth in the wind sector could lower the cumulative electric sector expenditures by $149 billion by 2050.
The Energy Department has supported research and development that has helped the wind industry install more than 60 gigawatts of wind power capacity—enough to power 16 million homes—and has helped decrease the cost of wind energy by more than 90 percent. However, continued technology development is essential to reducing costs in the near term and maximizing savings in the long term, says DOE.
The report sets out nine core “action areas” in a roadmap of actions the wind energy industry and the research community can take to optimize wind’s potential contribution to the nation’s energy portfolio, ranging from technology advancement to workforce development. The actions are designed to help remove hurdles to wind power deployment, while leveraging and boosting U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and the nation’s domestic clean energy workforce, and could also reduce the cost of implementing future policy measures.
The report, Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States , is available from the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Web site. The site also offers more information about EERE’s Wind Program, and the 2008 report on 20% Wind Energy by 2030.
