Almost 10,000 people have taken part in the EWEA 2010 campaign by adopting wind turbines or voting for the ones their friends had adopted in order to show their support for wind energy.

The ‘Breath of fresh air’ campaign is coming to an exciting point in just a few days: EWEA will be able to announce the two winners of the ‘tell a friend’ contest who will win a trip to Denmark and Switzerland.

One prize is a weekend in Copenhagen including a wind farm visit organised by the Danish Wind Industry Association. Denmark is the world’s wind energy pioneer with more than 20% of its electricity being produced by wind. Denmark is also home to major wind turbine manufacturers and its capital, home to the oldest monarchy in the world, has numerous museums, world-class modern architecture and a network of canals and cobbled squares that will take you back in time.

Much has already been written on the transformative power of wind energy – revitalising declining towns and harbours with new employment and industry.

Sweetwater, Texas, is no exception. Texas leads the US for wind energy installations, with 9,410 MW of installed capacity at the end of 2009. The wind turbines that now dot many of the wide Texas plains have brought money and as many as 10,000 jobs to the Lone Star State, reports the latest Wind Directions.

Signs of this new “wind rush” are everywhere near Sweetwater — from the ubiquitous turbines, to the cover of the local phone book that features a galloping horse and a turbine, to the local newspaper that promotes wind turbines as part of its logo, to the corporate identity of Sweetwater town itself.

Overcoming inertia and self-interests, the international community reached an agreement early today on the need to curb global warming and set the world on a path to a more sustainable future.

While both industrialised and developing nations came together in Cancun, no deal was struck on reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels.

Most observers acknowledged the agreement was much better than the non-binding Copenhagen Accord reached at last year’s UN climate change conference. Of the 193 nations attending the Cancun conference, only Bolivia rejected the agreement, saying it did not go far enough.

Nations can experience tremendous renewable energy investment growth over the next decade by adopting enhanced energy and climate policies, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The 77-page report found investments in wind power and other renewable energy assets in G-20 countries are projected to reach $189 billion by 2020 if governments implement no additional policies.

Financing increases to $212 billion if the G-20 countries enact the pledges they made shortly after the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen last December.

There were 2,198 visits to EWEA’s blog in November, an increase of nearly 40% from the previous month’s total of 1,662. With new posts going up at least three times a week, plus two or three a day during the GRIDS2010 event on 23-24 November, there was certainly lots for you to read!

While we thank all our loyal regular readers, it is also exciting to see that for last few months two thirds of visitors (66.5% in November) have been first time blog readers! And where do you come from? Well, the map shows most log in from Germany, the UK, Belgium and the US, closely followed by Spain.

Those of you who also use EWEA’s website, www.ewea.org, might be interested to find out that after the home page, the most popular part of the EWEA website is the reports. This is perhaps unsurprising given the huge amount of technical detail and expert research that goes into them – most recently EWEA’s report on the power grids, ‘Powering Europe’.