Factoid

In 2006, China built coal-fired power plants with capacity for 90 gigawatts. To put the size of China's energy demands into perspective, the United Kingdom uses 77 gigawatts of power per year. In comparison to the coal plants built, the world's total amount of energy that can be produced using wind turbines is 60 gigawatts. Since wind patterns are variable, the average production is 20 gigawatts. (Factoid from Jeremy Carl Research Fellow Stanford)