Leaving aside distributed wind energy and micro wind turbines for the moment, the Energy Department’s new 2014 Wind Technologies Market Report (produced by our friends over at LBNL — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) finds that the utility-scale wind energy sector supported 73,000 jobs in 2014, a huge jump up from the 22,500 jobs the DOE toted up in 2013.
That’s still with a minimal contribution from the aforementioned US offshore wind energy sector, which is only just starting to crank up with the first “steel in the water” for a new wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.
While the US is still second in the world in total installed wind capacity at 66 gigawatts, it bested all the others in terms of total wind energy production in 2014. That’s particularly impressive considering that the US has yet to tap its massive offshore wind energy potential.
read more at: https://cleantechnica.com/2015/08/11/micro-wind-turbines-still-play-us-wind-energy-vaults-lead/