The world's first wind turbine was built in Denmark in 1891, but due to technical and economic reasons, wind power has not been widely used.
Until the oil crisis occurred in 1973, developed countries such as the United States and Western Europe invested a lot of money to develop modern wind turbines using new technologies in order to seek energy alternatives to fossil fuels. Demonstration wind farms began to be built in the 1980s. In the 1990s, many countries formulated preferential policies to stimulate the development of wind power generation.
Since 1992, the annual growth rate of the cumulative installed capacity of wind power in the world has been higher than 15%, and the wind power technology is becoming more and more mature. From April 2 to 5, 2002, the first World Wind Energy Conference was held in Paris, France, and the wind power technology in Europe and North America developed rapidly. In 2006, 48 governments around the world introduced regulations to support the development of renewable energy such as wind power.
By the end of 2008, the cumulative installed capacity of wind power in the world had exceeded 120.8GW, equivalent to reducing 158 million tons of CO2 emissions. The US wind power market has maintained rapid development in recent years. In 2009, the newly installed wind power installed capacity was 9.92GW, and the accumulated wind power installed capacity reached 35.16GW, ranking first in the world.