Is wind energy at the inflection point?
According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry is expected to add about 2,500MW in installed capacity in 2005, which would represent a 37% growth over 2004 according to this DOE site.
For venture investors, finding direct dealflow in wind energy now requires some work -- most of the turbines are now produced by large, integrated, publicly-traded players, and (as discussed before) a lot of the remaining investment opportunities are project finance-oriented.
However, the growth of wind capacity heightens the importance of electricity transmission technologies, and there remain some very interesting investment opportunities in wind power generation or facilitation.
