The conference will focus primarily on the Policy and Business issues related to large scale integration of wind in Europe, targeting high level, invited speakers and participants from Institutions, regulators, TSOs, ministries, utilities, industry, etc.

In 2005, DG TREN initiated a dialogue with the main stakeholders addressing the issue of integrating wind power into the European power infrastructure. An informal meeting was held between representatives from the European Commission, Denmark, the Netherlands, ETSO and EWEA in January 2005. During a follow up meeting in April 2005, the UK was also involved in this dialogue. The objective of this on going process is to identify key issues and to reach a common understanding between decision makers, transmission companies and the (wind) industry. "This conference could provide an important contribution to this process”, said Beatriz Yordi from DG TREN of the EC.

"ETSO will present some preliminary results on the study on wind integration to the grids that together with all the TSO regional associations in Europe (UCTE, NORDEL, UKTSOA and ATSOI) and for the first time at European level, is conducting since March this year", said Ana Aguado, Secretary General of ETSO.

The joint EWEA / EC / ETSO conference in November aims to continue this dialogue, facilitate the cooperation between the different parties and address the key issues related to a large scale integration of wind energy in European grids.

The EWEA policy conference will take place one week after a technical workshop on large scale integration of wind organised by TU delft, Energynautics and KTH on 26–28 October 2006 in Delft, The Netherlands (http://www.offshoreworkshop.org). This workshop will focus on the technical issues related to large scale integration of wind. The two events will be complementary to each other and a key note speaker from this workshop will present the main outcomes in the EWEA conference.

“Both conferences will contribute significantly to the debate on how to effectively integrate significant amounts of wind energy into the European power infrastructure”, said EWEA President Arthouros Zervos. “In addition, the results of the conferences should give answers to the European Council’s ambition to create a single European grid and the proposed Priority Interconnection Plan”.

Wind energy actually covers less than 3% of European gross electricity demand, but is capable of delivering 12% by 2020 and in excess of 20% by 2030. The March 2006 EU Spring Council concluded that sustainability in the European Energy Policy should be promoted by considering raising the targets of renewable energy to 15 % in 2015. Wind power is perfectly capable of substantially contributing to meeting such targets. One of the major challenges for wind power to deliver such significant contributions to the European power mix is how to be effectively integrated on a large scale into the European electricity systems.