With the US national election only three months away, the country’s largest grassroots environmental organisation has come out with a report that states fossil fuel interests are spending large amounts of money attacking clean energies like wind and solar power.

Published last week, the Sierra Club’s 20-page report “Clean Energy Under Seige” said renewable energy’s strong growth and success over the past decade has made the green sector a target for unprecedented new attacks from oil, coal, and gas interests.

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Support for the onshore wind industry in France has blown hot and cold in recent months, but government backing for offshore was reinforced in April by its decision to award tenders to build offshore wind farms to produce 2 GW of energy. French company Nass&Wind Offshore, is taking full advantage of this momentum and investing in LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) measuring devices – a move it believes will give it a competitive advantage when the government decides to release a second offshore tender later this year.

LiDAR is an optical remote sensing technology that Nass&Wind is using to measure the speed of wind and turbulence up to an altitude of 200 metres – higher than the nacelle generally located 100 metres above sea level, says the company. Nass&Wind has now installed two of these devices off the coast of western France to try to accurately determine the power production potential of planned offshore wind farms.

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With some design flair and imagination, the significance of information lost in the deluge of facts and figures can be  made clear. The current spate of infographics floating around the web has brought to light several important facts that had been buried in thick reports, until rescued by a graphic designer.

A current favourite on the various EWEA social media platforms (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn AND Pinterest!) is an attractively designed infographic entitled ‘Europe’s Power Shift’. In muted tones of green, it tells a story that we should all be reminded of and aware of – that Europe, and in particular Scandinavia, is incorporating remarkable amounts of renewable energy into its power mix, with major changes occurring over the last ten years.

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The American, Australian, Canadian, European, Global and United Kingdom wind energy associations last week signed a joint statement on wind energy and health. Read it here…

In response to a proposed national study by Health Canada on wind turbine sound and human health, the American, Australian, Canadian, European, Global and United Kingdom wind energy industry associations point to seventeen reviews of independent research and evidence that all conclude wind is not harmful to human health.

According to the wind energy industry associations, wind energy is regarded as one of the safest forms of electricity generation. At the end of 2011 there was 237,669 MW of installed wind energy capacity around the world. Wind energy is a leading source of new electricity globally and is operating in more than 89 countries.

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As the world’s media attention turned this week to the Summer Olympics in London, a somewhat downplayed story of astonishing implications was emerging from the world’s biggest island: almost 97% of Greenland’s ice sheet experienced melting during early to mid-July.

In a normal summer period, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), only about half of the massive ice sheet experiences thawing periods.

In a press release, NASA officials noted that for several days this month Greenland’s surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations.

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