By Steve Sawyer, Secretary General, GWEC
The Eurozone crisis continues to deepen, the Chinese economy is threatening to stall, and the Arab Spring seems to be turning into the winter of discontent; and the war drums are starting to beat in Washington again. We’re having the warmest La Niña year in history, the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps are getting shakier and shakier, and even the chief economist of the IEA is warning governments that they only have five years to get their act together or the window for avoiding more than 2° C of global mean temperature rise will be all but closed.
In this context, it’s hard to make a rosy prediction for wind energy markets in 2012.
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For decades traditional fuels have enjoyed global dominance on the energy market virtually unchallenged, but that situation is changing. News out this week shows that global renewable energy deals surged last year by a massive 40%, triggered by the Japanese nuclear disaster and buoyed by an increase in billion dollar transactions.
The finding is contained in a PriceWaterHouse Cooper report published on Monday which reveals that renewable energy deals hit a record high of $53.5 billion in 2011 – compared to $38.2 billion in 2010.
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Every day newspapers are full of the latest Eurozone crisis. In 2010, Tom Murley from private equity firm HgCapital described the economy to Wind Directions as having had the equivalent of “open-heart surgery”. Today, he says: “Depending on what happens with the Eurozone we may be wheeling the economy back into surgery again.”
The offshore wind energy industry is particularly vulnerable to the current squeeze. Banks are now having to pay more for the long-term loans the sector requires, so they are becoming more reluctant to offer them.
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Comments Off on Offshore wind: a sector in crisis?
Tapping into the vast potential of America’s wind power and solar industries while also increasing the nation’s traditional domestic energy supplies formed a major part of US President Barack Obama’s annual State of the Union address last week.
Before an estimated television audience of 38 million viewers, Obama said the country could develop a lasting economy by building on energy, manufacturing, job skills and a renewal of American values.
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Comments Off on Obama says meeting US energy needs will require more wind power
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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