Wind power is being touted as the newest alternative energy source. Stanford researchers report that it may be the key to keeping up with the world’s growing energy demand.

Gathering more than 8,000 wind records on every continent, graduate student Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson, associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, have created a set of world wind-power resource maps that total 72 terawatts of power — 40 times the amount of electrical power used by all countries in the year 2000.

If just 20 percent of this total were tapped, Archer said, it would satisfy all the world’s energy needs.

One terawatt is enough power to light up 10 billion 100-watt light bulbs, according to the Discovery Channel Web site.

“It’s the first map of global wind power potential at 80 meters and the first to quantify the wind power available for economically-feasible wind energy,” Jacobson said. “It also locates several new areas of fast winds.”

The sites with the highest wind-power potential are located along the North Sea in Europe, around the southern tip of South America, the island of Tasmania, the Great Lakes region of North America and the northeastern and northwestern coasts of North America, Archer and Jacobson said.

“Some maps documenting global wind did exist,” said Jacobson. “But they only document wind power at lower heights and do not use the variety of data collection measurements.”

Wind generators are currently being built at record rates. Over the past five years, wind power systems have sprung up at an annual rate of 34 percent, making wind the fastest-growing electrical power source.

“We are kind of reassured that the numbers they have come up with are at least as good as those produced in the past,” said Mike Robinson, deputy director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Wind Technology Center in Colorado, in an interview with the Discovery Channel. “There’s a tremendous amount of wind.”

But wind power currently accounts for only little more than 0.5 percent of the world’s electrical power. According to Archer, the shortfall exists for two reasons — a dearth of data to help engineers properly place generators and the misconception that wind power is unreliable.

“I think the problem lies more with oil and coal companies,” freshman Jess Schaffer said. “What will they have to say about the possibility of their profit loss if wind power picks up speed?”