North Hoyle offshore wind farm

While this blog frequently focusses on wind power reporting in national-level newspapers, the regional-level or local newspaper does not get as much attention as it perhaps merits.

Last month I was in North Wales – a coastline which is home to the UK’s first large scale offshore wind farm called North Hoyle. It currently has one other operating offshore wind farm – Rhyl Flats, and a massive development is underway further out to sea at Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm which, when completed in 2013, is set to provide electricity to cover nearly one-third of homes in Wales.

There is, of course, local opposition. On this particular stretch of coastline the opposition group is called Save Our Scenery – slightly ironic given that the new offshore farm is 18 km offshore and will be frequently out of vision thanks to the often dense banks of Welsh cloud.

Wind power development in Brazil, South America’s largest and most populated nation, has been much in the news recently with a report that more than 88% of the country’s electricity came from renewables last year.

The preliminary report from Brazil’s Energy Research Company has revealed that wind power increased more than any other renewable power source, responsible for a 24% increase between 2010 and 2011.

Many of us take electricity for granted. It’s there in the morning when we turn on the kettle and it’s there at night when we switch the lights on. But are people aware of the need to upgrade and extend Europe’s electricity grids? Does anyone know that there is no EU-wide market for electricity and of the benefits that such a market could bring?

The results of a new study, which come as EU institutions debate the ‘infrastructure package’ – the European Commission’s draft proposals for updating and interconnecting EU electricity grids – show  just what people in Brussels think of electricity grids and the market. Here’s what they had to say:

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Austria will lead Europe when it comes to sourcing the highest percentage of electricity from renewable sources in 2020, according to recent analysis carried out by EWEA. The small, mountainous nation will source an impressive 71% of its electricity from renewables.

Next in line will be Sweden – set to source 63% of its electricity from renewables by 2020, followed by Latvia – 60%, Portugal – 55% and Denmark – 54%. At the other end of the scale, Poland, Estonia, Cyprus, Malta, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Hungary are all set to cover less than 20% of their electricity needs with renewable electricity.