Following up on my post yesterday presenting the top countries in the world for total installed wind power (end of 2011) and newly installed wind power (2011) per capita, below are charts and lists on the top countries* in the world for total installed wind power per GDP and newly installed wind power per GDP**.
–>Update: Top Countries in the World for Wind Power Compared to Total Electricity Production has just been published.
As noted yesterday, I’m not aware of anybody else putting this information together, but I find it much more useful and informative in some contexts than absolute numbers of total and new wind power capacity, which is reported by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) annually (see GWEC’s most recent annual report or our summary of it for more on that).
Now, on to the rankings (3 sections below):
Top Countries for Total Installed Wind Power per GDP at the End of 2011
To enlarge, click on the image and then click on it again on the next page.
In list format and with the specific numbers included, the top 20 are (in MW per $1 billion of GDP):
- Portugal — 17.09
- Spain — 14.51
- Cape Verde — 12.61
- Denmark — 11.62
- India — 9.60
- China — 8.55
- Germany — 8.12
- Ireland — 7.49
- Honduras — 5.87
- Sweden — 5.52
- Greece — 5.38
- New Zealand — 3.85
- Costa Rica — 3.22
- Poland — 3.15
- USA — 3.11
- Italy — 3.06
- Canada — 3.03
- Morocco — 2.93
- Netherlands — 2.77
- UK — 2.71
Top Countries for Newly Installed Wind Power per GDP
The first chart below includes all the countries which were presented with specific figures in GWEC’s latest annual report. However, since Cape Verde and Honduras have so much more new wind power per GDP and are relatively low-GDP countries, I’ve also produced a chart without Cape Verde included and one without either Cape Verde or Honduras included and posted those charts below (so that you can get a better sense for how the other countries compare with each other). Following all three charts is a list with the top 20 countries and specific figures.
Top countries for newly installed wind power capacity in 2011. (Click on the image, and then click on it again on the next page in order to see a larger version of it.)
Top countries for newly installed wind power capacity in 2011 without Cape Verde included. (Click on the image, and then click on it again on the next page in order to see a larger version of it.)
Top countries for newly installed wind power capacity in 2011 without Cape Verde and without Honduras included. (Click on the image, and then click on it again on the next page in order to see a larger version of it.)
And the top 20, with specific numbers on new MW of wind power capacity per $1 billion of GDP, are:
- Cape Verde — 12.09
- Honduras — 5.87
- China — 2.42
- India — 1.80
- Portugal — 1.58
- Sweden — 1.42
- Ireland — 1.10
- Greece — 1.03
- Poland — 0.85
- Canada — 0.73
- Spain — 0.70
- New Zealand — 0.67
- Turkey — 0.60
- Germany — 0.58
- Dominican Republic — 0.58
- UK — 0.53
- Denmark — 0.53
- USA — 0.45
- Italy — 0.43
- Belgium — 0.37
Top 10 Countries for New and Cumulative Wind Power Capacity (Absolute Numbers)
As I did yesterday, I’m again including GWEC’s charts on the top 10 countries for total cumulative and newly installed wind power. I think it’s worth noting how much different these top 10 lists are compared to the lists above. Clearly, while we often talk about China and the US being world wind power leaders, when you look at how they compare on a per GDP basis, things can change drastically. Though, on this metric, China still does very well on newly installed wind power capacity and quite well on total installed wind power capacity. The US, meanwhile, is only mediocre.
*As noted yesterday, while the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) puts together the most comprehensive report on installed wind power by country, it doesn’t include details for all of the countries in the world. In particular, countries with little or no wind power installed are not included. Since I used GWEC’s info for the rankings above, the rankings are not based on a comprehensive examination of wind power per GDP for all countries of the world.
**Source of GDP figures (retrieved June 4).
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