Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action

Denmark is synonymous with wind energy. Last year the Nordic country met a massive 26% of its electricity demand with wind power, confirming its pole position as a beacon for wind energy as well as for its ability to integrate renewable electricity into the grid.

Already a world wind energy leader, Denmark plans to do better: by 2020 it wants wind energy to occupy a 50% slice of its electricity generation as part of its plans to phase out fossil fuels by 2050. With this target, set by the Danish centre-left coalition government last year, and a second target to deepen carbon dioxide cuts to 40% by 2020 – the country is a blueprint for transitioning to a renewable, climate-friendly, fuel-independent economy.

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MEPs sitting on the regional development committee have rejected a proposal that would have allowed public subsidies to be spent on fossil fuel infrastructure projects under the European Regional and Development Fund.

The rejection came as part of the Regional Development Committee of the European Parliament’s vote yesterday on the proposed Cohesion Package. The report will decide on how to divide up a budget of €336 billion intended to develop regions, provide transport solutions, renewable energy and structural reform.

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Inspecting wind turbine blades is a time-consuming part of operating a wind farm and not always exact given that many inspections are carried out from the ground. The ability to send robots to the top of these increasingly bigger structures to monitor the blades is clearly attractive and two companies believe they may have found a way to turn this into reality.

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Wind energy opponents who say that producing electricity using the power of the wind is not efficient would do well to take a look at a new graphic published on the Guardian’s data blog using UK Government data. ‘Up in smoke: how energy efficient is electricity produced in the UK?’ shows that thermal sources of electricity – gas, coal, nuclear, waste/biomass, oil and other – lose massive amounts of energy as waste heat, compared to almost 0% for renewables.

Gas accounts for 48% of the UK’s electricity supply and, of the 372 Terra-Watt hours of electricity it produces per year, 54% of this is lost as heat. Coal, meanwhile, accounts for 28% producing 297 TWh, loses an even higher proportion – 66%. Nuclear – accounting for 16% of the energy supply with 162 TWh, loses 65% and oil – 3% of the supply with 51 TWh – loses 77%. continue reading »

By Megan Swieca

A group of about 500 wind energy enthusiasts assemble themselves to form a giant human wind turbine near the town hall of Poitiers, France, just as a flash mob bursts into dance and a bike rally trails through the city of Murmansk, Russia.

This is just a snippet of what took place on 15 June at two of the 230 Global Wind Day (GWD) event locations. The events, aimed to provide people with information about wind energy and celebrate its power, were vast in number and creativity.

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