|Global Wind Day infographic highlighting what energy imports costs EU citizens. Photo credit: Global Wind Day 2014.|
An initiative by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), called Global Wind Day aims to highlight the benefits of wind power.
At the Global Wind Day last year we highlighted the growth of wind power in the US.
This year the focus on the event which was celebrated yesterday (15th of June) was reducing energy dependence.
This from Global Wind Day:
‘’You spend €2 per day to import energy – support our campaign to reduce energy dependence.
Europe depends on imports for 54% of its energy. We spend €421 billion every year on coal, oil and gas imports, costing every European citizen more than €2 a day.
This isn’t necessary! Wind energy does not need to be imported and is already providing 3% of global electricity, a figure that is growing year on year. Wind turbines replace expensive fuel imports – and bring jobs and cleaner air.
And this isn’t just in Europe. Citizens in the US, Japan, China and other countries are also paying for unnecessary energy imports, when they too have their own energy resource at home – the wind.’’
The core message from the initiative is by the deployment of wind power, more home grown energy would be created and thereby reducing energy imports and moving towards energy independence. This is currently a very topical issue in Europe following especially the Ukraine conflict. There is increasingly a desire among European countries to reduce the reliance on Russian gas imports.
Organisations and wind power fans took to Twitter to celebrate Global Wind Day 2014: