2023 was a record year for wind installations as world ramps up clean energy, report says

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The world installed 117 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2023, a 50% increase from the year before, making it the best year for new wind projects on record, according to a new report by the industry’s trade association.

The latest Global Wind Report, published Tuesday by the Global Wind Energy Council, explores the state of the global wind industry and the challenges it’s facing in its expansion.

The increase in wind installations “shows that the world is moving in the right direction in combating climate change,” the report said.

But the authors warned that the wind industry must increase its annual growth to at least 320 gigawatts by 2030 in order to meet the COP28 pledge to triple the world’s installed renewable energy generation capacity by 2030, as well as to meet the Paris Agreement’s ambition of capping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

https://apnews.com/article/energy-global-wind-report-2024-74dd788b62c429edd004332808440b60

[Think. Again.]

1. Excellent news!!!...

The misinformation and other tactics by the fossil fuel industry might be slowing down our progress away from CO2 emissions but it certainly isn't stopping it!

[lastlib]

2. If somebody had put turbines on my hilltop yesterday......

they could've broken that record today. We had sustained winds of 45-60 mph all afternoon into evening, with gusts to 75mph. I lost some tree limbs, and neighbor had a HUGE elm limb come down on the power line from the street to their house.

[hunter]

3. In other bad news U.S. natural gas trade will continue to grow with the startup of new LNG export projects

In our recently released Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports will continue to lead growth in U.S. natural gas trade as three LNG export projects currently under construction start operations and ramp up to full production by the end of 2025. We also forecast increased natural gas exports by pipeline, mainly to Mexico. In our STEO forecast, net exports of U.S. natural gas (exports minus imports) grow 6% to 13.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2024 compared with 2023. In 2025, net exports increase another 20% to 16.4 Bcf/d.

We forecast that U.S. LNG exports increase 2% in 2024 to average 12.2 Bcf/d. In 2025, we forecast that LNG exports grow by an additional 18% (2.1 Bcf/d). We forecast U.S. natural gas exports by pipeline to grow by 3% (0.3 Bcf/d) in 2024 and by 4% in 2025. We expect pipeline imports to decline by 0.4 Bcf/d in 2024 and then increase slightly (0.1 Bcf/d) in 2025.

In 2024–25, we forecast that existing U.S. LNG export facilities will run at similar utilization rates as in 2023. Annual maintenance typically occurs in the spring and fall, when global LNG demand is lower and temperatures are mild. In April and May 2024, we expect LNG exports to decline while two of the three trains at the Freeport LNG export facility undergo annual maintenance. Later in 2024, we expect that Plaquemines LNG Phase I and Corpus Christi Stage 3 will begin LNG production and load first cargoes by the end of the year. In 2025, the developers of Golden Pass LNG plan to place in service the first two trains of this new three-train LNG export facility.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61863

Meanwhile, the wind industry perpetuates the lie that natural gas is a "transitional" fuel.

I leave it to the reader to calculate how many houses 12.2 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas could power, in combination with wind turbines or not.

It recently occurred to me that wind farms are just as ugly as gas fields when viewed from 35,000 feet and that they serve the same masters.