Wind energy has made headlines in the UK this week with the Guardian reporting that the views of some Members of Parliament could scupper billions of pounds of investment and the creation of hundreds of new jobs in wind energy.

The paper reports that “billions of pounds’ worth of investment in Britain’s energy infrastructure is on hold or uncertain because of concerns over the government’s commitment to wind energy.” Leading energy companies surveyed by the Guardian with plans to set up factories, research facilities and other developments have said they need reassurance on the UK government’s commitment to wind energy before they go ahead.

Cross-posted from the Estonian Wind Power Association’s blog – November 11, 2011

If you type green, clean, modern, renewable or wind energy into a Google images search the results are mainly images of wind power plants and farms, said Werner Nystrand, the Swedish photographer, who spoke at last month’s Wind Power Conference in Tallinn and who takes breathtakingly beautiful pictures of wind power plants and their surroundings.

Everybody knows the symbols of Paris and Sydney – Eiffel Tower and Opera House. And today everybody also knows the symbol of clean energy – a wind turbine. These symbols are easy to draw and therefore easy to remember and people relate them to emotions and values. These values and emotions are not actually in the symbol but through cultural impressions we associate these values with the symbol.

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.

We’re often wondering how much bigger wind turbines will get – 10 MW, 20 MW, even more? But what about the practicalities of getting those huge components from the factory to the wind farm site?

In the latest Wind Directions, we discuss how new transport equipment is constantly being designed to transport the up to 85 metre long blades and 200 tonne weight nacelles and towers. In fact, the transport can represent 10% of the delivery costs.

Barclays bank has launched a new £100 million investment fund for UK farmers to invest in renewable energy, the bank announced this week. The launch of the fund follows a survey of UK farmers carried out by Barclays which found that over one-third are “expecting to invest in renewable energy, with the majority doing so within the next year.”

Some 80% of the farmers questioned said they think that renewable energy can provide significant cost savings, with 60% saying that renewable energy could generate additional income for their farm business, Barclays said. Meanwhile, Barclays itself predicts that the costs of wind power will fall by up to 50% in the next three to five years.