Windlab and other major multinational wind development companies are investing in South Africa's energy market in the belief that wind power will play a significant role in the nation's fuel mix.

South Africa has abundant wind resources,  an urgent requirement for additional generation capacity and  a competitive feed in tariff. For all this we must now question whether the market is under threat due to severe under-estimation of the wind potential.

Current estimates of South Africa's potential wind capacity varies greatly, from 3 GW to 70 GW.

The end of the coal age is now inevitable - it's only the timing that's in question. In the face of this the NSW government is potentially on the verge of approving a 15% increase in the State's greenhouse emissions when it releases its decision on the coal powered Bayswater and Mt Piper extensions this week. They are doing this at a time when NSW alone has 1311MW of FULLY APPROVED wind power projects awaiting construction and many more in the development pipeline.

The Australian parliament recently passed a mandatory renewable energy target for Australia. It maintains the long established 'REC' market - a trade in renewably generated electricity. The trouble with the legislation is that the effectiveness as a market mechanism for cheap clean electricity deployment has been thoroughly compromised by successive governments using it as a convenient place to dump all manner of energy 'problems' or to politically justify at best dubious stimulus measures.

I have been following the US and Australian political debates over emissions trading with interest. I agree wholeheartedly that we need to reduce emissions and creating a tradeable certificate for releasing C02 is an efficient way to do this. But do these political debates and the UN process culminating at Copenhagen really matter to wind power and Windlab?