Across the European Union, 43.7% of all new electricity generation last year came from wind power.

According to the European Wind Energy Association it is the fastest-growing new source of electricity in the bloc — ahead of coal and gas. Germany is the front runner in wind power generation, with Sweden and France not too far behind.

“Europe is at a turning point for investment in renewables and particularly wind,” according to the chief executive of the EWEA. “Ploughing financial capital into the industries of old in Europe is beginning to look unwise.”

This year in the US, the Department of Energy released a report called Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States, which found that wind could economically provide 35% of the country’s electricity by 2050.

“Wind power could help America combat climate change by avoiding more than 12.3 billion tons of carbon pollution cumulatively by 2050, equivalent to avoiding one-third of global annual carbon emissions,” the report states.

And in Australia? We are planning to reduce — that’s R E D U C E, for the dullards among you — the amount of renewable energy that it’s economically viable to produce.

Why? Because those wind turbine thingies are really ugly. Don’t you reckon?