Wind power

Since the first wind power plant was built at the end of the 1990s, power generated by wind power has enjoyed dynamic growth, thanks to state support programmes. With more than a third of the world's installed capacity, no other land has as many wind power plants as Germany. According to the German WindEnergy Association, at the end of 2005, more than 17,574 plants with a total capacity of 18,428 megawatts had been installed. In the year 2005, a year that saw only weak winds, these plants produced 26.5bn kW/h of electricity. This corresponds to about 4.3 % of Germany's entire electricity consumption and provides the largest contribution to power generation from renewable energy sources. (Source: AGEE-Stat - working group on renewable energies/statistics, as of: February 2006).

Support
The reasons for this exemplary boom in the last 15 years can be found in the support programmes of both the national and regional governments, which make the use of this form of energy for private and agricultural purposes, as well as for municipal facilities, attractive - as well as a legally fixed payment for electricity that is fed into the mains system, as regulated in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG - Erneubare Energien Gesetz). All this support has led to technical improvements and to a switch to larger turbines, with an associated lowering of investment as well as electricity generation costs. The launch of wind turbines onto the German market was kicked off by the 1989 support programme "100 MW of Wind", as launched by the German government, which later raised it to 250 MW. The wind energy market received a decisive boost with the introduction of the Stromeinspeisegesetz (Electricity Grid Feed Act) of 1991. Due to the legally fixed remuneration of initially 8.49 ct/kWh, as well as programmes supported by national and regional governments, the feed-in of wind-generated energy into the national grid became increasingly attractive. This was limited to the plants then in the 20 to 150 kW output range, initially in particularly favourable coastal locations, and then increasingly extended to include inland sites. The adoption of the Renewable Energies Act (EEG), which superseded the Electricity Grid Feed Act in April 2000, established new planning security after the liberalisation of the electricity market. This led to the magical threshold of 10,000 MW of installed capacity nationwide being breached as early as 2002.

Domestic sector
According to the IKEE (Informationskampagne für Erneuerbare Energien - Information campaign for renewable energies), the wind power industry has grown into an enormous economic factor: ¤4.5bn turnover in Germany and more than 64,000 employees in the year 2005. Services provided by German manufacturers of wind turbines include planning, construction, equipment, plant engineering, plant supervision, finance packages and training. Exports already play a very important role for the German industry, one that will continue to expand. The export rate is 64 per cent and the revenue from foreign business amounts to nearly ¤3bn. One reason for the increasing international demand for wind turbines is their increasing cost-efficiency: the costs for this environmentally friendly kind of energy production have more than halved since the beginning of the 1990s.

International markets
Many non-European countries have much better conditions for generating energy by means of wind power: high wind speeds inland that are almost constant all year round, or long coastlines for offshore wind farms. The profitability of wind power projects that run in parallel to the national grid is not least dependent on the conditions set by the energy policy of the country. Incentive systems and favourable conditions for the energy sector are already in place in quite a few developing and newly emerging countries. However, in regions where there are no supporting measures from their energy policy, there are small units linked to the grid that offer the possibility of independently providing electricity to households and communal facilities.