US officially leads world in wind

The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), a consortium of wind power supporters, based out of Brussels has announced some news that will have a lot of us pretty geeked. Last year, they revealed, showed tremendous gains in the wind market, growing 28.8 percent, to reach 120 GW of installed capacity.

Steve Sawyer, Secretary General of GWEC adds, "The 120 GW of global wind capacity in place at the end of 2008 will produce 260 TWh and save 158 million tons of CO2 every year."

In the race to fight climate change, and move away from geopolitically volatile, deletable fossil fuels, wind offers the promise of oodles of largely untapped power. As Bob Dylan would say, "The answer my friends, is blowing in the wind."

Last year the U.S. started to exploit this resource in earnest, with 50 percent growth, to reach 25 GW of capacity. The big news is that for the first time the U.S. seized the world lead in wind power production, wresting it from former champion Germany.