Something on the wind

County Cork in south-western Ireland offers the kind of picture-book landscape straight from a tourism brochure — gently rolling hills, picturesque villages with colourful pubs, and cattle and sheep grazing in pretty pastures.

But a drive along some of the back roads these days also reveals another new feature, one which is now quickly spreading the world over: Atop some of those picture-perfect hills stand up to a dozen towers with huge propellers twirling in the wind.
Ireland, a country 95-per-cent dependent on fossil fuels, is starting to discover wind energy in a big way — like many other countries around the world.
At the end of 2005, the world’s nations had added some 11,300MW of installed wind power capacity, reaching 59,000MW, according to the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) based in Bonn, Germany.
Europe continues to be the heavyweight in the wind power field, with a total of 40.9GW installed capacity or 69 per cent of the world total, followed by America (US, Canada, Mexico) at just over 10GW and Asia at 7.02GW.
Still lagging far behind are the Australia/Pacific region with an installed windpower capacity of just 572MW at the end of 2005, and Africa, at only 252MW, according to the WWEA.
Germany, with 18.43GW, is the leader both in Europe and worldwide, followed by Spain at just over 10GW. Third worldwide was the United States with 9.15GW installed wind power capacity at the end of 2005.
Both the WWEA and the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) are certain that the wind power sector is due for further strong growth, with much of the expansion now foreseen not only in Europe but also in the Asian region, for several reasons.
The higher oil prices go, the comparatively more competitive does wind-generated electricity become, they say. Countries seeking to meet their Kyoto carbon emissions reductions targets now also regard wind as a viable alternative, they add.
Ongoing technology improvements will assure that more electric power can be produced with greater efficiency from sites, both onshore, and, increasingly, offshore, the organisations also argue.
Finally, there is an increasing realisation that wind power development also translates into jobs — 235,000 worldwide, according to the WWEA — and economic activity as new wind engineering equipment installed in 2005 reached $14 billion, according to the GWEC.
“Wind energy today is not only a viable option to generate electricity in a sustainable and affordable way, but has, in several countries, become one pillar of the energy generation system,” WWEA president Anil Kane commented on the 2005 figures.
Christian Kjaer of the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) says, “By 2010, wind energy alone will save enough greenhouse gas emissions to meet one-third of the European Union’s Kyoto obligation.”

· Douglas Sutton