Energy and climate change issues rank as one of the Slovenian Presidency’s main priorities. Ahead of the Slovenians lies a challenging six months: leading complex negotiations on the Commission’s proposed energy-climate package, ensuring the adoption of the Strategic Technology Energy Plan (SET-Plan) and steering discussions on the electricity and gas internal market. At EWEC 2008, Minister Vizjak will address the policy challenges facing the EU as a whole in the field of energy, including the 20% RES target, and outline his vision for the future of renewables from the Presidency perspective.

The European Coordinator for connections to offshore wind power in Northern Europe, Georg Wilhelm Adamowitsch, has also confirmed his participation in the opening session. Mr Adamowitsch will address the challenges and contradictions concerning policy and industry in relation to offshore wind energy.

Updated programme now online

The online conference programme for EWEC 2008 is now available, with details of all sessions and speakers. It will be updated regularly. Over the four days of the conference, 200 speakers from the wind industry, international institutions and national governments will present their latest ideas, technologies and projects. The 40 sessions, ranging from policy-level panel discussions to highly technical workshops, are split into themed ‘tracks’, covering business, policy, finance, science and technology and will provide a comprehensive insight into wind energy.

New Finance Forum for EWEC 2008

A new innovation for this year’s event is the introduction of the Wind Energy Finance Forum, a series of sessions which will feature the key wind energy finance players from across Europe. Designed by experts with practical experience in wind energy financing and investment, this forum offers those involved (or wishing to be involved) in financing wind projects, investment decisions or risk analysis an opportunity to learn from, and engage with, the leading experts. Sessions will be dedicated to the following topics:

• Public markets
• Project finance
• Risk assessment
• Private equity of wind farms
• Impact of wind on electricity prices

TradeWind, TP Wind & UpWind workshop sessions

On Tuesday, 1 April 2008, three of the conference sessions will focus on specific EU projects related to wind energy.

  

- The workshop on International Integration Studies (BW1) will present and discuss recent results from ongoing European wind power integration studies. TradeWind, a study carried out by the European wind energy industry, looks at interconnector allocation and market aspects up to 2030, facilitating the integration of mainstream wind power generation.

       
- The UpWind workshop (BW2) will address the latest results and some critical R&D issues of the UpWind European Integrated Project, including material properties for blades, remote sensing and wind farm flow phenomena.



- The TP Wind workshop (BW4) will focus on the progress made so far by the European Technology Platform for Wind Energy (TPWind). After one year of operation, TP Wind will deliver its first Strategic Research Agenda and Market Deployment Strategy documents.

For more information:
See the TradeWind website or contact Zoe Wildiers
See the UpWind website or contact Zoe Wildiers
See the TP Wind website or contact Nicolas Fichaux


For more information on EWEC 2008 please click here or download the full event guide.
To register for EWEC 2008 please click here.