The EU Commissioner for Climate Change emphasised the role of targets in boosting investments in renewable energy at an EWEA event last night.

“It makes good business sense to invest in renewables yet people aren’t doing it”, said Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, pointing out that “this is one lesson we’ve learned in Europe in the last ten years – it helps when we have targets and it helps even more when we have binding targets.”

Earlier in the debate, she specifically referred to her “hope” for “milestones” in the European Commission’s upcoming 2050 Energy Roadmap, due out in December.

While the US experienced a significant dip in new installed wind power capacity last year due to the ongoing financial crisis, polarised politics and concerns over federal tax incentives, the industry has robustly bounced back, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports.

Not only that, but wind energy is now more affordable than ever as new installations are saving customers money on their electric bills while utilities rush to lock in long-term favourable rates.

By Tuuliki Kasonen, General Manager, Estonian Wind Power Association

Initially planned as a modest information exchange seminar, the Wind Power Conference held in Estonia in the end of October turned into an international wind energy conference. More than 150 people visited the event during the two days dedicated to wind energy in Tallinn. In addition to local participants there were visitors also from Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Belgium and Denmark.

With more than 20 experts giving presentations about social, visual and economical aspects of wind energy the conference culminated with the currently most debated topic in Estonia – why and how much should wind energy be supported. The event was organised in cooperation with the Estonian and Swedish Wind Energy Associations (EWPA & SVIF) and supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Pamplona in Spain – a town famous for its annual bull run – is home to one of Europe’s foremost wind turbine and renewable energy testing facilities, CENER – the national renewable energy centre.  Last week the EWEA policy team visited the centre to see behind the scenes of testing wind turbines to the limit.

Nestled in the outskirts of Pamplona, CENER’s aim is to test new products and optimise wind turbine and other renewable energy manufacturing procedures. It is made up of huge testing halls. One of these is dedicated to testing turbine blades up to 80m long. Athanasia Arapogianni, EWEA’s research officer, saw a live testing:

“It’s very impressive – they put huge, moving weights on different parts of the blade to simulate the different loads of the wind, bending it in all different directions. It can take up to four months to properly test one blade,” she said.