(C) Chad Baker - Photodisc

European citizens think integrating national energy networks into a single European energy network would help reduce energy costs, encourage better use of various types of energy, and make delivery of energy safer. The results are part of a survey of 26,836 participants across Europe carried out by the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy Committee this February.

A wind farm in China, is to become the 3,000th project registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – a UN mechanism to deliver carbon emission reductions in a way that contributes to sustainable development – a United Nations agency said Thursday.

According to a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) press release, the 41 wind turbines located in Inner Mongolia, will produce up to 49.5 MW of electricity and are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 101,000 tonnes a year.

I am just returning from Abu Dhabi where negotiations on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on renewable energy – the most comprehensive review of the sector written by the world’s leading experts on energy and climate science – have drawn to a close.

While the negotiations were long and arduous, the message I take home is clear: With renewables, the world will never run out of energy. In fact the total potential for renewables is “substantially higher than both the current and projected future global energy demand,” according to the report.

Significant news for the renewable energy industry in Europe emerged yesterday after Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Change, again stated that we should “be discussing a renewable energy target for 2030”, in an interview with the Guardian. In April, Hedegaard made a similar statement in a Danish magazine, but again without making a concrete proposal.

This is not the first time a Commissioner has broached the subject of a 2030 target for renewable energy. Günther Oettinger, the European Commissioner for Energy, recently said ”We will have….a proposal from the Commission side for a long-term [renewable energy] target for 2030 and 2040 and 2050”.

The European offshore wind sector is clearly “in the driver’s seat” and will remain the world’s leading market for the next decade, says Peter Asmus, the senior analyst for an international market research firm.

Asmus said Monday that a new report by Pike Research shows that although the United States has begun to develop its offshore wind potential, China will be Europe’s main rival in the sector in the next 10 years.