Outlooks for Wind Power in the United States: Drivers and Trends under a 2016 Policy Environment

<p>Over the past decade, wind power has become one of the fastest growing sources of electricity generation in the United States. Cumulative wind capacity grew from about 9 gigawatts (GW) in 2005 to approximately 74 GW by year-end 2015. On a percent-of-total-generation basis, wind grew from 0.4% to 4.7% over this same period. This trend indicates a clear increasing role for wind; however, significant variability in historical annual wind installations has occurred with year-to-year fluctuations in wind deployment strongly correlated to changes in energy policies, particularly the wind production tax credit (PTC) policy. Notwithstanding significant possibilities for wind power, including the potential for over one-third of U.S. electricity to come from wind power as was considered by the DOE’s Wind Vision, much uncertainty exists with respect to the future of wind power in the United States.&nbsp;</p>

Author(s) Trieu Mai, Eric Lantz, Jonathan Ho, Tyler Stehly, and Donna Heimiller