Wind energy jobs in United Kingdom

Wind energy industry is rapidly growing in United Kingdom. If UK maintains its current growth in wind power capacity, wind turbines will satisfy 10% country's electricity needs by 2013. Therefore, it comes to a very little surprise that wind energy sector is currently the fastest job creator in United Kingdom. According to the recent study by RenewableUK in the last three years UK wind industry experienced growth of 91% in terms of new wind energy jobs.

In 2007 UK wind industry employed around 4800 people, and in 2010 this number increased to around 9200 people. At the end of 2012 the UK wind energy industry employs around 12,200 people in full-time jobs.

Though offshore wind energy is currently receiving plenty of popularity the majority of UK wind energy jobs still refers to large-scale onshore wind with 56% of total wind energy jobs. However, the offshore wind energy industry employed 45 % more people in 2012 than in 2010.

UK wind industry is currently employing more people than UK coal industry. At the end of 2011 the UK coal industry employed around 6000 people. For comparison purposes, a hundred years ago coal industry employed around million people in UK.

It has been estimated that UK offshore wind energy sector has the potential to employ around 70,000 people by 2020.

Only 7-8% of the total number of people employed in UK wind power industry is employed in small-scale wind though this percentage is expected to significantly grow in years to come.

UK currently has around 6.9GW of total operational wind farm capacity. With the project currently being in development phase, this number should increase to 13.5GW by the end of the next year. One MW of capacity is roughly enough to power around 650 average homes in UK.