In just over three months’ time thousands of wind energy professionals will gather in Vienna alongside EU and national level decision makers, financeers, technology specialists and others at the European Wind Energy Association’s Annual Event, EWEA 2013.
But what will everybody be talking about at the event? Yesterday, I spoke to some of the conference’s lead session chairs to get a glimpse of just one of the topics that will make Vienna buzz next February…
Turbine technology – just how big can turbines get? Now that the 5 MW barrier has been broken, what’s the next step? While some said the “sky is the limit” others pointed to practicalities like the ability to transport large turbine components, especially offshore. No vessel in the world has yet been designed to transport the largest of turbines one insider told me. Others noted that onshore, turbine size probably wouldn’t get much bigger due to possible public acceptance issues.
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Dr. Reinhold Mitterlehner, Austrian Economy Minister
Austria leads Europe when it comes to sourcing the highest percentage of electricity from renewable sources, and by 2020 an impressive 71% of its electricity is expected to be powered by renewable energy from hydropower to wind power.
Next year Austria will host EWEA’s Annual Event and from February 4-7 visitors to the conference and exhibition in Vienna will also get the chance to sign up for trips to visit the country’s renewable energy fleet.
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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).
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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.”
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Siemens new 75m turbine. Copyright Siemens
Two new technological developments in the global wind power industry have been garnering media interest recently as the emissions-free generating sector continues to increase its world-wide installed capacity year after year after year.
Siemens announced earlier in August that it had built, at 75 metres, the world’s largest rotor blade for wind turbines.
By way of comparison, and to understand just how long the new Siemens blade is, those who attended EWEA’s Annual Event in Copenhagen in April 2012 may remember that massive LM Wind Power 73.5-metre blade displayed outside the Bella Center.
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