By Fiona Woo, World Future Council

Winds of 60 km per hour hit us as soon as we alighted from the bus at Hvide Sande – “White Sand” – on the west coast of Denmark, home to a community-owned wind energy project comprising three 3MW turbines. All that could be heard was the powerful wind: the generators cannot be heard over the considerable sound of the wind.

I was joined by 40 policy makers and experts from 15 European countries as part of a workshop on 100% Renewable Energy in European Regions, organised by the World Future Council and the Climate Service Center at the Nordic Folkecenter, Denmark. The region serves as a living example of 100% renewable energy already in action. Wind plays a big role in this area of Europe: 87% of the country’s electricity consumption that day was covered by wind power, and, in Denmark as a whole, €16 million from local residents is being invested in renewable energies.

Angelika Pullen

By Angelika Pullen, WindMade

This, I have to admit, is a real coup for WindMade: Bloomberg US is the first news organisation in the word to receive the WindMade certification label.

This is also good news for the environment: as much as 58% of the power consumption of Bloomberg’s US operations are covered by wind power, and a further 25% by biomass energy. These shares are much higher than the 25% entry level WindMade requires!

Bloomberg believes that this move will give them a competitive edge, and they might well be right – consumers love renewable energy. Once again, this year’s edition of the Global Consumer Wind Study[i] comes to this conclusion, showing that 79% of respondents would prefer to have their electricity generated by renewables, compared to 5% for fossil fuels and 7% for nuclear. And, what’s more, 74% of consumers answered that they would have a more positive perception of brands that use wind power as their main energy source.

Mark Potter, RSA

By Mark Potter, Head of Renewable Energy at RSA

The number of countries with renewable energy targets more than doubled between 2005 and 2011. This is a clear sign that policymakers have seen the importance of promoting the benefits of clean energy, including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, job creation, the development of rural areas and greater independence and security of energy supply.

Last year, €12.6 billion was invested in wind farms in the EU. Nevertheless there seem to be some challenges ahead for this sector since the continuing European sovereign debt crisis is likely to negatively affect future growth, as some countries across Europe begin to see investment and subsidies for further development in renewable energy reduced.

Pierre Tardieu, EWEA

By Pierre Tardieu, Co-Chair of the Policies and Markets track at EWEA 2013

Some wind energy markets across Europe are experiencing damaging changes to their national support schemes which are counterproductive since they set back the prospect of renewables being able to compete without support in the near future.

Italy is in the process of going from a tradable green certificate mechanism to a combination of Dutch auction for installations over 5 MW and a feed-in tariff under 5 MW. This represents a major challenge for the sector which will have to adapt to the new scheme in a matter of months (the new scheme will be effective as of 2013).

Remi Gruet

By Rémi Gruet, Senior Regulatory Affairs Adviser – Climate and Environment, EWEA

It is hard to think of a newspaper more committed to free markets and hard economic facts than the Financial Times. So when it publishes a hard-hitting editorial entitled ‘Europe’s flawed carbon market’, politicians should sit up and take note.

Not impressed by the recent agreement between the EU and Australia to link their carbon markets, the editorial says that the EU’s intention to forge further links with nascent carbon markets in South Korea, some US states and China “is at present the wrong ambition.”