The US wind energy industry is on track to add well over 3,000MW to the nation's power generating capacity in 2007, thereby topping last year's record of 2,454MW, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said in its second quarter market report.
This bullish performance by the industry is tempered, however, by supply chain shortages and policy uncertainty, two barriers that are related.?Wind power developers report that turbine availability is a limiting factor, in other words, there is demand for even more wind energy but companies can't build more projects because there aren't enough new wind turbines to buy. And, in turn, there aren't enough manufacturing facilities for turbines and turbine parts in the country because the U.S. government's intermittent policy toward renewables has discouraged companies from investing in manufacturing facilities. The new projects completed this quarter are located in:Texas (603MW), Illinois (198MW), Colorado (75MW), Iowa (36MW), New York (20MW) and Minnesota (3MW).