EWEA 2015: Wind provides economic benefits - Giles Dickson

"Wind makes economic sense," Dickson told Windpower Monthly at the EWEA EWEA 2015 conference in Paris (17-20 November). "Onshore wind is the cheapest form of new power generation capacity today in Europe. It is significantly cheaper in terms of levelised cost of electricity than coal, gas or any other form of power generation," he said. 

EWEA released a report at the event, which found if wind could exceed Europe's target of electricity demand of 23% by 2030 and reach 28%, it would have a €13 billion benefit to Europe's GDP.  

But Dickson said European states have more work to do to catch up with emerging economies in developing their wind markets. 

"Out of 28 member states, only four have clear objectives, clear policies in place for renewables beyond 2020. That's absolutely not good enough," he said.

"If you look at the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) that over 150 countries have now tabled ahead of COP21, you see very clear commitments on wind and other renewables going well beyond 2020 up to 2030. 

"You see those committments from China, India, Brazil, Turkey and even smaller countries like Ghana and Bangladesh. There are 54 countries outside of Europe that have said in their INDCs that wind is a key mitigation technology and they want to advance it. They're putting in place policies to do that."