With an exciting battle between a brother and sister, the Breath of Fresh Air campaign’s ‘Tell a friend’-contest came to an end on 20 December 2010 midnight.

Over 10,000 people have participated in the Breath of Fresh Air campaign since its launch in April 2010, adopting turbines all over Europe or voting for those their friends adopted.

The top five countries for adoptions were Spain (491 turbines adopted), Italy (433), UK (427), France (420) and Germany (231). But wind energy enthusiasts adopted turbines everywhere in Europe: from the Faroe Islands to Turkey, from Norway to Portugal, from Poland to Switzerland.

The US wind power sector received two huge endorsements last week involving the first proposed offshore wind farm in the country and the nation’s favourite building.

Cape Wind, a 130 turbine project that was first proposed a decade ago, received its final permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday, allowing it to begin work on the 468 MW wind farm in Nantucket Sound, Massachusetts.

In a press release, Cape Wind President Jim Gordon said the permit represents 10 years of work for the company and 17 federal and state agencies.

Complicated things sometimes can be explained in only a few words – check out EWEA’s FAQs to find the answers to your wind questions you were always looking for.

When talking about wind turbines and their capacity – that is, their ability to generate electricity — the word megawatt is used all the time. Capacity is measured in watts which is a very small unit, so people talk instead about kilowatts (1 kW = 1,000 watts), megawatts (1 MW = 1 million watts), and gigawatt (1 GW = 1 billion watts) when they want to describe the capacity of generating units like wind turbines.

The electricity production and consumption, on the other hand, is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). A kilowatt hour means one kilowatt (1,000 watts) of electricity produced or consumed for one hour. That means one 50-watt light bulb left on for 20 hours consumes one kilowatt-hour of electricity (50 watts x 20 hours = 1,000 watt-hours = 1 kilowatt hour).

Wind power in Turkey should benefit from a 72-point plan announced by the government that is designed to increase the nation’s competitiveness in global markets.

Turkey’s Industry and Commerce Minister Nihat Ergün announced the “Industry Strategy Document and Action Plan”, which includes the establishment of giant ports, logistics bases and railways, at a conference on Wednesday, according to the Anatolia News Agency.

“In an effort to improve energy efficiency, the plan foresees the establishment of methods to utilise the country’s potential in energy resources, including hydroelectricity, wind, geothermal, solar and biomass,” the story added. “The government will encourage the use of products that rely on alternative energy resources.”

In the frenzied lead up to the Christmas-New Year’s holiday season, some fascinating news about another potential benefit of wind power received little attention in the mainstream media.

A report out of Ames, Iowa suggests that wind turbines in farm fields may be helping crops of corn and soybeans to have increased yields because they can remain cooler and dryer in hot summer months while fighting off fungal infestations.

Preliminary findings of a months-long research program aimed at studying how wind turbines on farmlands interact with surrounding crops also raises the possibility that rotating turbine blades improve the ability of corn and soybeans to extract atmospheric CO₂, a needed “fuel” for crops, according to a press release.