By the end of 2008, the United States had overtaken Germany as the largest generator of wind energy in the world, the American Wind Energy Association said. It estimated that the nation has more than 21,000 megawatts of wind-generated power.
But, as the association makes clear, wind contributes just 1 percent of the nation’s electric power supply.
Even so, the boom in wind power will have created 9,000 new jobs by the third quarter of 2008.
And the association estimates that 21,000 megawatts can generate more than 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2009 – enough to power over 5.5 million American homes. That’s enough to displace some 30.4 million tons of coal, 91 million barrels of oil a year or 560 billion cubic feet of natural gas (about 9 percent of the natural gas used for electricity generation).