Over one billion people worldwide live without access to safe drinking water, and the pressures of climate change and a rising global population mean this figure is likely to increase. A French wind company is trying to alleviate this problem – inventing the first wind turbine that can produce drinking water by condensing the air.
If you think the UK media report mostly anti-wind stories you could be right. But news just out could help to stem the flow of wind power criticism. Wind farms generate millions for the economy and create thousands of jobs, a new UK government-backed study has found.
The study followed the fortunes of 18 wind farms and found that communities around those farms received around £84 million (€104 million) in 2011, with 1,100 local jobs supported. BiGGAR Economics, an independent UK consultancy and author of the study, said that in total Britain’s onshore wind farms supported 8,600 jobs and were worth £548 million (€680 million) to the UK economy last year.
Media sources have today published reports claiming that wind farms can cause local temperature increases. The news, based on a study carried out on large wind farms in Texas, has been widely reported and, in some cases, falsely linked to global climate change.
The study, headed by a researcher at the State University of New York-Albany, says that a wind farm in Texas has warmed local night-time temperatures by up to 0.72°C. This is because wind turbines create turbulence that conducts warmer night air higher in the atmosphere to the ground, where temperatures are cooler at night.
It sounds almost too good to be true, but Europe could save €20 billion on fuel costs, improve its air quality and create up to 1.5 million new jobs, according to a new report. How? By moving to a higher climate target for 2020.
The European Commission report looked at the impact of moving to a target for a 30% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the financial crisis and industry slow-down, the current target – for a 20% cut – has become easy to reach.
Anyone who has ever visited Africa and witnessed the continent’s still grinding poverty and its poor access to electricity will be delighted by recent news that work should begin later this year on a 300-MW wind farm in Kenya.
Officials with the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project (LTWP) said 365 wind turbines would eventually be erected in an arid region in the east African nation, which has a population of about 43 million people.
