Canadian wind power doubles in 2006

If you read carbon-defending columnists Eric Reguly and Richard Blackwell in the Globe & Mail, you might think that the wind power business would be best advised to pull up their towers and move, well, just about anywhere other than Canada. They might be serving the role of Old Economy Beefeaters, protecting the carbon crowd. Or maybe they were just being ironic, but I think we’ve poked some holes in their “arguments” in the past. But, one can never win this argument enough, so here is a release from Emerging Energy Research of Cambridge, MA:

After more than doubling in 2006 to 1,468 MW, Canada’s installed wind power capacity is expected to grow nearly tenfold to 14,100 MW by 2015, according to a new study by Emerging Energy Research (EER) – a leading advisory and consulting firm tracking emerging technologies in global energy markets.

“In the past two years the Canadian wind power market has evolved from relative obscurity — an occasional diversion for wind turbine vendors struggling for market share in the US — to become one of the world’s largest and fastest growing wind power markets,” says EER senior analyst Joshua Magee.

“In the past two years the Canadian wind power market has evolved from relative obscurity — an occasional diversion for wind turbine vendors struggling for market share in the US — to become one of the world’s largest and fastest growing wind power markets,” says EER senior analyst Joshua Magee.

With C$18 billion in wind power investment forecasted between 2007 and 2015, Canada is expected to rank among the world’s five or six largest wind power markets over the forecast period, with annual MW development over the coming decade set to average 1,400 MW, according to EER’s study Canada Wind Power Markets and Strategies 2007-2015.

No doubt EER is sympathetic to the wind power sector, but to see the tremendous uptake in just one year is a great sign. Those are just facts, and not spin. And our portfolio company Ventus Energy’s turbines on PEI won’t be turning for a few weeks yet, giving a boost to the 2007 figures. And I just received a global warming panel (panels are an online form of surveying; thousands of Canadians belong to Reid’s panels and from time to time are asked their views on a variety of topics) from Angus Reid’s company Vision Critical (another portfolio company), so one can expect that he has some clients that are keen to get a sense of the nation’s mood on that topic as well, which can only be expected to help the green power investing movement.

MRM