Wind energy has been used for millennia in a wide range of applications. The use of wind energy to generate electricity on a commercial scale, however, became viable only in the 1970s as a result of technical advances and government support. A number of different wind energy technologies are available across a range of applications, but the primary use of wind energy of relevance to climate change mitigation is to generate electricity from larger, grid-connected wind turbines, deployed either on land (‘onshore’) or in sea- or freshwater (‘offshore’)