THE World Bank and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have launched a new Global Wind Atlas, a free web-based tool to help decision-makers identify promising areas for wind power generation, virtually anywhere in the world.

The Global Wind Atlas is expected to help governments save millions of dollars by avoiding the need for the early stage, national-level wind mapping. It will also provide commercial developers with an easily accessible platform to compare resource potential between areas in one region or across countries.

The new tool is based on the latest modelling technologies, which combine wind climate data with high-resolution terrain information—factors that can influence the wind, such as hills or valleys, and provides wind climate data at a 1km scale. This yields more reliable information on wind potential. The tool also provides access to high-resolution global and regional maps and geographic information system (GIS) data, enabling users to print poster maps and utilize the data in other applications.

“There is great scope in many countries for the clean, low-cost power that wind provides, but they have been hampered by a lack of good data,” said Riccardo Puliti, Senior Director and Head of the World Bank’s Energy & Extractives Global Practice. “By providing high-quality resource data at such a detailed level for free, we hope to mobilise more private investment for accelerating the scale-up of technologies like the wind to meet urgent energy needs.”

While the data powering the Global Wind Atlas is the most recent and most accurate currently available, it is not fully validated in many developing countries due to the lack of ground-based measurement data from high precision meteorology masts and LiDARs.

Source: The World Bank. Picture: Adobe Stock.