It may have taken place last month, but pictures from Global Wind Day are still coming in. Here’s some from Norway…

Taken in Oslo where wind energy enthusiasts met Snorre Valen, spokesperson for  environment policy in the Socialist Party.

By guest blogger Tuuliki Kasonen-Lins, General Manager of Estonian Wind Power Association

Two months before this year’s Global Wind Day, the Estonian Wind Power Association announced an imaginative contest with the aim of generating innovative ideas on what a wind turbine might look like in the future. On the 15 June, when the energy from wind was celebrated all over the world, the winners of the contest were announced and an exhibition showing many great ideas for the future opened.

The idea behind the contest was to bring attention to the fact that wind energy is not only about green energy, which indeed is an important factor, but it also produces long-awaited growth in the energy industry sector and creates new jobs. This improves the economy, which has been weakened in most places in the world. Martin Kruus, the CEO of Estonian Wind Power Association said at the Global Wind Day event that we should not talk only about wind turbines and where they should be installed but also about the opportunity for a small country like Estonia to become recognised as a major player in the wind energy industry.

“The aim of the Future Wind Turbine contest was to motivate people to brainstorm about wind energy in the future,” explained Kruus. “Our companies have already been active in this field – proven by the latest news about the Estonian Wind Energy Cluster receiving co-financing from the European Regional Development Fund which will enable wind energy related organisations to cooperate more actively.”

The Future Wind Turbine contest had two categories. The youth group winner was Anton Rosner, a student of power engineering at Tallinn University of Technology. The jury found his idea of wind turbines in a large city remarkable because of the way it presented a possible solution on how to integrate wind energy into the architecture of buildings. In the opinion of Anton Rosner, the buildings should be built in a cylinder shape that does not cause obstacles for the wind. The walls are covered with several hundred vertical axis wind turbines, whose blades are slightly tilted in order to avoid a major obstacle for the wind. The wind turbines may be the same colour as the buildings or transparent or with bright colors that turn the building visually vibrant. Rosner won a trip to WinWind’s wind turbine factory in Finland.

The winner of contest’s main category was Teri-Liis Toome for her “Earth and Sky” with the message that in future technology should blend more into the natural environment and look less like machines. Variable wind turbines should replicate the diversity of nature so Teri-Liis Toome envisages wind plants the shape of trees or clouds. The idea is novel because of the symbiosis of design and use of space and, even though the idea is an artistic imagination, the author hopes it will be a source of inspiration for engineers. Toome won the use of a Toyota Prius for one month.

To see all of the entries for the competition, click here:

http://www.tuuleenergia.ee/wp-content/uploads/Tulevikutuuliku-konkurss-2010.ppt

About 50 junior school children from Grand Prairie, Texas who completed a two-week course on wind power learned about Global Wind Day, turbines and offshore wind farms, according to Kyle Damon, who organised the unique program.

Damon, a science and technology facilitator at David Daniels Elementary, said the students who were between 8 and 10 years old used reading, writing, mathematics and science to understand wind power.

“It was everything wind,” Damon said in a telephone interview with the European Wind Energy Association. “Everyone enjoyed it.”
The students learned about the history of wind, the power-generating industry, turbines and pitch, he said, adding one group of students even built a model offshore wind farm in a tray of water.

“The kids loved [the course] and the teachers had fun with it.” Damon said the idea for the course came about because the wind power sector is becoming such a large industry in Texas.

Earlier in the week, Global Wind Day was promoted by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) which urged citizens to lobby Congress to pass a “Renewable Electricity Standard” as a way of attracting the investment required to continue the growth in wind power and other renewable energies.

Among other Global Wind Day-related events, AWEA highlighted five highly beneficial facts that wind power offers the US, which is, after China, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels.

“Global Wind Day is a great opportunity to underscore that wind works because it is vital to our nation’s economic, energy, and environmental security,” Denise Bode, AWEA CEO said in a press release. “With our ‘Five Wind Facts,’ we hope to encourage more citizens to get involved in the campaign to increase America’s use of wind energy, and to call on Congress to pass a strong national Renewable Electricity Standard as part of energy and climate legislation.”

The association noted that wind power creates a significant number of new jobs, offers financial help to farmers and rural communities, provides long-term stable electricity prices for consumers, is an inexhaustible and reliable generation source, and mitigates environmental degradation by reducing greenhouse gasses caused by destructive fossil fuels.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), the US wind power sector installed nearly 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity in 2009, enough to serve over 2.4 million average American homes. The 9,996 MW installed last year expanded the US wind plant fleet by 39% and brought total wind power generating capacity in the nation to over 35,000 MW.

GWEC also notes that wind energy is now operating in 36 of the 50 US states, with Texas the leader with more than 9,000 MW of total installed capacity.

Some 87% of Italians are in favour of more wind energy in their country, new research unveiled on Global Wind Day at an event in the Villa Borghese in Rome showed. Economic development and job creation were among the top reasons cited for their positivity.

“At Global Wind Day we want to reiterate the importance of renewable energies as one of the key solutions to the economic and climate crisis,” Edoardo Zanchini from Legambiente, an Italian environment group, said.

In another piece of good news for Italian-produced wind power, Simone Togni, Secretary General of the Italian Wind Energy Association, announced to an audience gathered for Global Wind Day in Rome that by 2011, wind energy will provide electricity to 10 million Italians.

By 2020, wind energy will meet 7% of Italy’s energy needs, saving 19,250,460 tonnes of CO2 a year and 37,770,559 barrels of oil, he estimated.

During the first half of 2010, the sector employed 1,000 more people compared to the previous year, bringing the total number of jobs in wind energy in Italy to 25,530 – a growth that continues despite the economic crisis, ANEV said at the event.

”This is the outcome of many years of hard work and the recognition of an energy that moved from being marginal to being a mass producer of electricity,” Oreste Vigorito, ANEV President, said.

From bike tours through wind farms to a kite-surfing contest, Global Wind Day attracted attention across the whole of Italy.

Wind power creates sustainable energy, spurs on the economy by providing new jobs and helps reduce stresses on the environment, Stephen Molnar, the mayor of Tillsonburg, Ontario, said during a Global Wind Day tour of the Erie Shores Wind Farm.

“Actually, it’s been an extremely valuable experience,” Molnar said in a telephone interview with the European Wind Energy Association.
Molnar and other politicians were part of a tour Tuesday of the four-year-old Erie Shores facility in southern Ontario, which is described as being one of the largest wind power facilities in Canada, representing nearly 3% of the nation’s installed wind capacity.

Organised to celebrate the second annual Global Wind Day, the tour was proudly hosted by the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA), which quoted in a press release another local mayor as saying her nearby municipality has benefited greatly from wind energy.

“We sought this opportunity to bring positive change to our region, and have benefited from job creation and increased tax revenues, new tourism and our local farmers now have another source of income,” Lynn Acre, mayor of Bayham, which is home to the Erie Shores Wind Farm, was quoted as saying.

The press release also noted CanWEA President Robert Hornung said it is important to celebrate Global Wind Day in Canada.
“Wind energy is now being produced in every province and we expect wind energy’s rapid growth in Canada to continue with production quadrupling in the next five years,” Hornung said. “With its unparalleled wind resource, large hydroelectric capacity, strong manufacturing base and linkages to the US market, this country has an incredible opportunity to maximize the economic, industrial development, and environmental benefits associated with wind energy.”

A growing number of analysts in Canada, which is the second largest nation in the world and has a population of more than 33 million people, are promoting emissions-free wind energy as a solution to the country’s need for increasing amounts of green electricity.

According to the federal government, fossil fuel combustion is the main source of three major air pollution problems — climate change, acid deposition and urban smog. Canada ranks 27th out of 29 OECD nations in terms of energy use per capita, the government says. Canadians annually consume 6.19 tonnes of oil equivalent per capita. This is almost double the OECD average of 3.18 tonnes of oil equivalent per capita, and more than five times the world average.