Wind power growth has been slowing, but the IEA sees better days ahead, upping its 2050 target for global electricity generation to 18 percent.

As we reported just yesterday, wind power has hit a bit of a rough patch, with installations in the first half of the year down for the third year in a row. But don’t look for this trend to last very long, according to the International Energy Agency.

The agency has just updated its technology roadmap for wind, first put out in 2009, and in the process hiked from 12 percent to 18 percent the target for how much of the world’s electricity wind power could generate by 2050. In the IEA’s hopeful scenario, offshore wind will drive much of the growth, with plummeting costs (down 45 percent) helping to boost offshore’s share of wind power from about 2 percent today to 6 percent in 2020 and 25 percent in 2050.

via IEA Sees Wind Power Bouncing Back Big : Greentech Media.