We consider the stationary and non-stationary Navier-Stokes equations in the whole plane R 2 and in the exterior domain outside of the large circle. The solution v is handled in the class with ∇v ∈ L q for q ≥ 2. Since we deal with the case q ≥ 2, our class is larger in the sense of spacial decay at infinity than that of the finite Dirichlet integral, i.e., for q = 2 where a number of results such as asymptotic behavior of solutions have been observed.For the stationary problem we shall show that ω(x) = o(|x|2 ) as |x| → ∞, where ω ≡ rot v. For the non-stationary problem, a generalized L q -energy identity is clarified. As an application, we prove the Liouville type theorems under the assumption that ω ∈ L q (R 2 ) and ω ∈ L q (0, T ; L q (R 2 )) for the stationary and the non-stationary equations, respectively.