Installed wind power capacity continued to grow around the world last year despite the ongoing financial uncertainty with Europe remaining the number one regional leader, according to a new report.

Europe’s installed wind capacity increased by 10,281 MW to 96,616 MW by the end of 2011, the Global Wind Energy Council’s (GWEC) annual statistics show. In the EU, the new total was 93,957 MW.

Asia was the second place regional leader with 21,298 additional MW of installed wind capacity, bringing its cumulative total to 82,398 MW. North America was in third place with an additional 8,077 MW last year increasing its total capacity to 52,184 MW.

Imagine a world two decades from now in which a new wind turbine is installed every seven minutes.

That impressive scenario was raised last week in Beijing just before the China Wind Power 2010 conference by Sven Teske, Senior Energy Expert from Greenpeace International.

Teske was commenting on the Global Wind Energy Outlook 2010 report which found wind power could provide about one-fifth of the world’s electricity by 2030.

By Guest blogger Angelika Pullen, Global Wind Energy Council

Many developments in China can only be described in superlatives, and wind power is no exception. When I first visited Beijing to attend the ministerial Beijing Renewable Energy Conference (BIREC) in 2005, the city looked very different, and so did the wind energy industry. Back then, China only had around 1,000 MW of installed wind capacity, and when the government used the conference to announce its target of reaching 30 GW of wind capacity by 2020, this seemed nearly insanely ambitious.

And yet, a mere five years later, China has already achieved this target, 10 years early. Not only that – industry experts predict that at least 40 GW worth of wind turbines will be operating in China by the end of this year; possibly more. Given the current difficult situation in the US, there is even a distinct possibility that the world’s largest economy would have to cede its place as leading wind power country to China at the end of December this year. If that doesn’t happen, it almost certainly will in 2011.

What explains the dramatic growth of wind power in China? Genuine political commitment is certainly the deciding factor, something the US has been lacking to date. In 2005, the Chinese government passed the Renewable Energy law, which attracted both foreign and domestic investors to flock into the market. Nearly all large European, US and Indian wind turbine manufacturers established themselves in China to secure a piece of the (very large) cake. But China now also counts more than 30 domestic wind turbine manufacturers, three of which are now among the world’s leading suppliers, as well as an entire supply chain serving the industry.

Further proof of China’s desire to aggressively tap into the still nascent, and potentially highly lucrative, offshore wind power sector as part of its plan to embrace a green energy revolution was revealed earlier this week in a story by ClimateWire.

The story, published by Environment & Energy Publishing and distributed by The New York Times, also pointed out just how much further China is ahead of the US in developing its offshore wind industry.

“What the U.S. doesn’t realise,” the story quoted Peggy Liu, founder and chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, as saying, is that China “is going from manufacturing hub to the clean-tech laboratory of the world.”

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then fire up your laptop and tap into this Google Earth video of wind farms from above. Amongst the wind farms highlighted, satellite footage takes the viewer from Egypt to Australia, from India to China, from Denmark to Spain, from the UK to Canada to the US.

So, click on the video below and enjoy your virtual flight.

And, just like wind power, it’s a no-carbon trip.