HARRISBURG – The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is publicly recognizing today as Global Wind Day. Global Wind Day is a worldwide event, coordinated by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). The day is designed to help people discover wind, its power and the possibilities it holds to change our world.
“Pennsylvania embraces an all of the above and below approach to energy generation and alternative and renewable energy resources, such as wind, and recognizes them as key components of Pennsylvania’s current energy portfolio,” said PUC Commissioner Pamela Witmer and Chairman Robert F. Powelson in a joint statement.
“It is important to have a diversified energy generation portfolio. Wind, as with other alternative energy sources, can be a job enhancer. There are 22 facilities manufacturing and assembling components for the wind industry in our state,” said Commissioner Witmer.
In 2004, Pennsylvania’s General Assembly enacted the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS), which requires that 18 percent of all energy generation come from alternative and renewable energy sources by 2021. Of that, 8 percent must be derived from Tier I renewable energy sources, like wind. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), in 2011, the percentage of Pennsylvania power provided by wind was 0.9 percent.
More facts about Pennsylvania wind energy follow:
- Pennsylvania is home to the first commercial wind farm east of the Mississippi River, located in Somerset County;
- Pennsylvania currently has more than 660 wind turbines, representing approximately 1,300 MW and ranks 15th in the nation in total installed wind capacity;
- Pennsylvania was ranked ninth nationally for new capacity wind installations in 2012; and,
- Pennsylvania’s installed wind power avoids more than 1.75 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually
“A clear indicator of the importance of wind in Pennsylvania is the fact that the Commonwealth served as a founding member of the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, a bipartisan group dedicated to the development of the nation’s wind energy resources to meet domestic energy demand, reduce dependence on imported energy, collaborate on best practices and regulatory consistency and spur economic development,” Witmer and Powelson said in the joint statement.
The PUC balances the needs of consumers and utilities; ensures safe and reliable utility service at reasonable rates; protects the public interest; educates consumers to make independent and informed utility choices; furthers economic development; and fosters new technologies and competitive markets in an environmentally sound manner.