Much in the news this past week was a major new study conducted for Massachusetts which found there is little or no evidence that wind turbines cause so-called “wind turbine syndrome” that some critics have been employing in their anti-wind campaigns.
Health and engineering experts who completed the study for the US state’s Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health were also dismissive of previous work done by Dr. Nina Pierpont who has claimed that vibrations and noise from wind turbines cause an array of detrimental health effects.
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In a recent interview, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol pointed out that “fossil fuel subsidies are a hand brake as we drive along the road to a sustainable energy future. Removing them would take us half way to a trajectory that would hold us to 2C.”
Mr. Birol is of course referring to the fuel subsidies that governments around the world give towards lowering the price of fossil fuels, such as the $409bn spent by 37 governments in 2010. He is also referring to the fact that these subsidies encourage the use of polluting substances, and that eliminating the subsidies would go a long way towards achieving the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees.
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What does the power of the wind that blows across our land mean to you? Do you have a keen eye for new and exciting ways to capture wind energy on camera? Are you interested in winning a €1,000 Amazon voucher? Then this is the competition of a life-time for you.
Today the European Wind Energy Association and the Global Wind Energy Council are launching an international photo competition – ‘Wind in Mind’ – inviting all photographers to snap wind energy technology in ways that have never been seen before. The competition will run until 6 May and winners will be announced on Global Wind Day – 15 June 2012 – the annual day for discovering the power of wind energy.
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Anyone who has ever travelled through Wyoming comes away realising that the US state is an iconic symbol of wide-open spaces, intimidating mountain ranges and powerful winds.
Building on this natural bounty, it now seems likely that the state will soon be home to North America’s largest wind farm — as many as 1,000 turbines generating up to 2,500 megawatts of emissions-free electricity for 30 years.
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By EWEA Communication Director Julian Scola
In recent months there have been many media articles claiming that wind energy is more expensive and less reliable than other power sources, and that it receives heavy government subsidies. Such claims damage the perception of this cheap and clean form of energy.
The reality is that wind energy, and renewables in general, are successful because investors see that onshore wind is increasingly competitive with new gas and coal and is cheaper than nuclear, in an environment in which governments have made commitments to reducing carbon emissions, and where the public wants a safer, cleaner world without constant fluctuations in energy prices. Current data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says that “funding of green energy projects rose by 5% last year” to $260bn worldwide. Another Bloomberg quote says “the best wind farms in the world already produce power as economically as coal, gas and nuclear generators; the average wind farm will be fully competitive by 2016”.
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