Why Wind Power?

Wind power investment is growing consistently at 30% per annum worldwide as people turn towards clean, safe and reliable forms of energy generation based on renewables like solar and wind power. Last year nearly half of all new electricity energy generation installed globally used renewable energy. Denmark produces over 20% of its electricity from wind power and over 150,000 families belong to 2,100 wind turbine cooperatives, which have installed 86% of all the wind turbines in Denmark. In July this year Australia’s first community owned wind farm, Hepburn Wind, commenced generating power in Daylesford, 50 km from Castlemaine.

For over eighteen months MASG has been researching renewable energy options that will provide the most significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to put our shire on a path towards being a truly sustainable community. We have been advocating the installation of solar photo voltaic (PV) systems for the direct generation of electricity as well as solar hot water systems.

Our research has highlighted that wind is a very important source of renewable energy and has a crucial role to play in the generation of large amounts of cost effective clean electricity. The cost of solar PV has fallen significantly in recent years but is still well above the cost of wind power.  Wind is currently the more cost efficient form of renewable energy.  The decline in cost of large scale electricity generation using wind power (compared to other renewable energy technologies) has led to a big increase in investment and growth in the wind power industry.  Wind ‘farms’ are now a common sight in countries such as Germany, United States, Spain, China, India and in parts of Australia.

Why wind is cost effective & environmentally sustainable

The table below shows the cost of electricity and emissions produced for different methods of electricity generation.

Source: Diesendorf, M. (2007) Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy, UNSW Press, p. 355. (Available from MASG)