How long has the wind energy industry existed in the U.S.?
The U.S. has had modern, commercial-scale wind power for more than two decades. The first domestic wind farms were constructed in California in the early 1980s. The U.S. wind industry reached its first 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity in 1985, but then took more than a decade to reach 2,000 megawatts in 1999. Since 1999, however, the installed capacity has increased fivefold. Today, wind energy is the nation’s fastest growing source of commercial-scale power.
