Wind technology at scale refers to the installation of wind turbines for generating electricity on a massive scale, generating electricity for millions of households. At a large scale, wind energy can create thousands of jobs and help countries achieve independence from dirty energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Achieving large-scale wind generation requires significant financing. This might involve governments investing in wind directly – many of the world’s largest wind energy producing nations have relied on state ownership, or part ownership of wind assets. Other support may include money to help other investors build turbines or subsidies that ‘top up’ the price they sell energy for to help make sure they break even on their original investment. Likewise, research and development (R&D), and investment in infrastructure that supports large-scale wind farms, like transmission lines and batteries to store energy, are also important for building wind generation at scale.

Large scale wind farms require careful planning and consideration, especially with regards to the area where they are being installed. The wind needs to be consistently strong, and it is equally important to reduce the impact on people and wildlife, which often means building large scale plants offshore. Wind energy is ‘intermittent’, we can’t call on it when we want, so spreading wind installations over large distances, building wind farms alongside solar generators and other sources of clean energy, rolling out flexible tech such as battery storage, and building necessary grid infrastructure all help to ensure that wind energy can reliably meet demand on a large scale.

Despite the up-front costs, wind energy is far cheaper to produce than fossil energy. This can help bring down prices, but in market based systems, governments have to be careful to ensure that an overabundance of wind in a particular area doesn’t drive wind energy prices so low that owners can’t make their original investment back. Expanding energy storage and other flexible tech, building out grid infrastructure, subsidies, and bringing wind farms into public ownership would each go some way to solving this issue.

To activate this Global Project, at least one player must have 3 Wind tags in their play area.

Once active: When a player takes a Local action on a card with a Wind tag that generates Clean Energy tokens, they add 2 more Clean Energy tokens to their player board.

• Rapidly scale up zero-carbon electricity generation (Systems Change Lab)

• Wind (International Energy Agency, IEA)

• Consider investing in a community wind farm or supporting wind energy projects through crowdfunding platforms.

• Businesses can invest in on-site wind turbines or purchase renewable energy credits from wind energy projects to offset their carbon emissions.

• Contact your political representatives to advocate for the integration of wind energy into national and international energy plans.

• Join an organization or group that is pushing for expanded wind energy.