Meet Philippa Jones, the EWEA blog’s new correspondent who this month explores plans for wind energy in Belgium’s French-speaking region…

Belgium is not known for its quick negotiating skills. It took politicians 541 days to agree a new government after the incumbent administration resigned in April 2010. After 30 months of negotiations, the leaders of French-speaking Wallonia finally submitted plans to revise legislation governing the development of wind power in the region last December.

Renewable energy producers are disappointed with the plans and last month submitted their views to the regional government, insisting that changes must be agreed quickly to allow the industry to move forward.

In a kingdom frequently divided by disagreement over matters political and beyond, it is heartening to see wind energy getting a resounding “yes” vote. The results of a survey published last week in Belgium show that 86% of Walloons – the French-speakers living in the south of the country – are pro wind energy.

What is most revealing in the results is the confirmation, once again, of the fact that when people live in the vicinity of a wind farm, they become much more actively pro-wind energy. The survey shows that a huge 91% of people with a wind farm in their area are favourable towards wind energy, while for those who do not live near a wind farm the figure is 62%.

And while the ‘NIMBY’ phenomenon is often considered to be one of the biggest obstacles to wind energy development, only 8% of people living near wind turbines said they “feared” the effects beforehand. Just a tiny minority of NIMBYs, then, and the majority of those were proven wrong: for three-quarters of this 8%, the fears proved to be unjustified once the turbines went up.

Ward Van Hout, a student studying Aerospace Engineering at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, tells EWEA why he is a fan of wind energy and why he adopted a wind turbine as part of EWEA’s 2010 campaign…

EWEA: Why do you support wind energy?

Van Hout: I support wind energy because it is the future. Wind energy will help us to overcome the shortage of fossil fuels. There has been an enormous increase in world population which means a drastic increase in energy consumption. And with this comes more and more pollution, higher CO2 concentrations, etc. An excellent alternative is wind energy. On Earth, sufficient wind is available for our energy needs. Strikingly, there is 200 times more wind energy available than current energy demand. Wind power is solar power, meaning that as long as the sun is giving us heat, we can make use of wind turbines to collect that power. It is clear that wind energy is the driving power of the 21st century – the renewable energy age!

Eleven turbine towers, six of which are already connected to the electricity grid providing power to thousands of homes, stand tall and proud on the Levant de Mons plateau near Estinnes, Belgium. It’s a grey, cold day when we visit and the wind’s obvious strength is turning the blades at a consistent rate of knots.

What’s different about these turbines is the sheer amount of power they can produce – at 6 MW each they are the largest ever to be installed on land. Once all these impressive machines are connected to the grid, they will provide power for 50,000 homes – more than enough to keep the lights on in nearby town Mons.

Built by Enercon, these E-126 turbines sit on a 27 metre-large concrete foundation and are connected to the electricity grid via 11km of underground cables. Installing them requires one of the world’s largest cranes and hefty lorries capable of transporting the turbine and its components from the factory in Germany to the farm in Belgium.

We pick our way through the pools of mud surrounding the turbines and go inside a turbine tower where the noise of electricity-generation is intense. The tower is 131 metres tall and inside is a panel indicating just how much electricity is being produced at the time, wind speed and direction, and whether or not the turbine is connected to the grid. WindVision, the company developing the project, estimates that annually the Estinnes turbines will produce 187,000,000 kWh of electricity.

Back outside and close-up to the tower, today, the noise is no louder than the sound of the wind or traffic passing on the nearby main road. In addition, turbines are now slowed down at night to reduce sound from the wind turbines reaching residents.

Local children have already adorned the grey towers with wind-friendly messages such as “les éoliennes, c’est cool,” and “je suis folle des éoliennes.”

Once the Estinnes park has been completed, WindVision hopes 6 MW turbines will be installed across Europe.

EWEA’s campaign to get every turbine in Europe adopted is racing ahead with more than 800 turbines now adopted. A record 142 turbines have been adopted in one of wind energy’s pioneering countries – Spain, while another of Europe’s wind energy giants – Denmark – trails far behind with just 20 adoptions.

No other countries have yet reached the 100 turbine mark, but the UK is not too far off with a total of 89 turbines adopted.

The northern-most turbines to be adopted are on the Faroe Islands, while a handful of turbines have been adopted in southern Europe, in regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

The voting contest is also hoting up with one turbine in Belgium receiving a massive 121 votes. This turbine in Lanaken, eastern Belgium, produces 4,600 MW of electricity, saving 2,631 tonnes of CO2 a year.

Have you adopted a turbine yet? Click here to see more.