Wind power started in California in 1981 when the Altamont wind farm in Alameda County was built as a reaction to the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s.

But now, as a new map released Thursday shows, the industry is spreading rapidly across the United States, with more than 52,000 large-scale turbines now operating in 41 states.

A time lapse feature on the map, built by the American Wind Energy Association, shows the growth over time, from one lonely wind farm at Altamont Pass in Northern California to hundreds of wind farms that construction crews are building all across the remote fields and ranches of Great Plains — from Texas to North Dakota — and most recently, in the ocean, with America’s first offshore wind farm opening last year off Rhode Island.

The industry still has controversies. Turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year, and some residents fight their power lines and visual impacts. But wind advocates like to point out that more than 1 billion birds are killed by domestic house cats, and another billion are killed by flying into buildings.

Through the second quarter of 2017, the U.S. now has 84,405 megawatts of installed wind power capacity, enough to power 25 million households, and twice as much as it had in 2010. That’s the result of lower prices from more efficient turbines, federal and state tax credits, and state laws that require a certain percentage of many states’ total electricity generation to come from renewable energy.

Some of its biggest cheerleaders aren’t Sierra Club members in Birkenstocks.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican whose state ranks fifth in the U.S. in wind production, behind Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma and California, recently announced a goal of Kansas producing 50 percent of its energy from renewable power.

“In my first State of the State speech in January of 2011,” Brownback said, “I said that Kansas was already known as the Wheat State and the Sunflower State, but that I wanted Kansas to also be known as the Renewables State. “Fast forward six years, and Kansas has made major strides.”

In California, where a state law signed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown requires 50 percent of the state’s electricity to come from solar, wind, biomass and other renewable energy by 2030, a bill pending in the state Legislature would increase that to 100 percent by 2045, part of the state’s aggressive effort to reduce smog and greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

Thursday’s map from the American Wind Energy Association also shows the location of the businesses that make wind turbine parts and other related equipment. The industry now employs more than 100,000 people in the United States.

But how much green power is being generated? The latest numbers from the U.S. Energy Department show wind energy generates 6 percent of America’s electricity, about the same amount that all hydropower dams generate. By comparison, 34 percent comes from natural gas, 30 percent from coal, 20 percent from nuclear and 1 percent from solar.

In California, which consumes virtually no coal, the numbers are different: All renewables make up 28 percent of in-state electricity generation, with natural gas at 50 percent, large hydropower at 12 percent, nuclear at 10 percent and coal less than 1 percent.

The biggest wind project completed in 2017 so far is the Western Plains Wind Farm outside Dodge City, Kansas, which has 122 turbines and 280 megawatts of power, built by Westar Energy of Topeka. The blades are 173 feet long and the towers are 262 feet high.

That project pales in comparison, however, to a $4.5 billion farm with 800 huge turbines planned for the Oklahoma panhandle. That project, proposed by American Electric Power, would generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity, roughly the same as California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, by 2020.