This presentation provides information on the following aspects of wind power: the resource; wind technology; global status and costs; wind technology manufacturing; policies promoting wind development; project development issues; benefits of wind power; challenges to wind power development and best practices. Policies described include feed-in tariffs; mandatory renewable energy targets (portfolio standards); government auction or resource concessions; financial incentives (loans, wire charges); developer tax incentives and green power markets.

Refrigerators and air conditioning units feature high on the wish lists of people in hot countries. The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that by the year 2030 the energy consumption for air conditioning in developing countries and emerging nations will be four times what it is today. It is often the case that the gases used as refrigerants are produced chemically. They are damaging to the ozone layer and accelerate climate change. By contrast green technologies use natural gases in the cooling process, are more energy efficient and can be driven by sun or wind power.

This is a European on-shore wind resources at 50 meters of altitude map, developed by Riso National Laboratory in 1989. The map shows the so-called generalised wind climate over Europe, also sometimes referred to as the regional wind climate or simply the wind atlas. In such a map, the influences of local topography have been removed and only the variations on the large scale are shown.