Installed wind power capacity continued to grow around the world last year despite the ongoing financial uncertainty with Europe remaining the number one regional leader, according to a new report.

Europe’s installed wind capacity increased by 10,281 MW to 96,616 MW by the end of 2011, the Global Wind Energy Council’s (GWEC) annual statistics show. In the EU, the new total was 93,957 MW.

Asia was the second place regional leader with 21,298 additional MW of installed wind capacity, bringing its cumulative total to 82,398 MW. North America was in third place with an additional 8,077 MW last year increasing its total capacity to 52,184 MW.

With more than 450 people dying as of Tuesday because of the freezing temperatures currently sweeping Europe, news reports that Russia has reduced its natural gas supplies to some European countries once again highlights the problems of security of supply of imported fossil fuels.

European policy makers can’t do anything about the punishingly cold polar air that is expected to hover over the region for at least another week, but they can make sure that proposals currently before the European Parliament and Council of Ministers to speed up the permitting, and assist the financing, of grid extensions and upgrades are approved without being watered down. They can also put the right policy framework in place up to and beyond 2020 in order to boost the supply of domestically produced renewable energy.

Tapping into the vast potential of America’s wind power and solar industries while also increasing the nation’s traditional domestic energy supplies formed a major part of US President Barack Obama’s annual State of the Union address last week.

Before an estimated television audience of 38 million viewers, Obama said the country could develop a lasting economy by building on energy, manufacturing, job skills and a renewal of American values.

Much in the news this past week was a major new study conducted for Massachusetts which found there is little or no evidence that wind turbines cause so-called “wind turbine syndrome” that some critics have been employing in their anti-wind campaigns.

Health and engineering experts who completed the study for the US state’s Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health were also dismissive of previous work done by Dr. Nina Pierpont who has claimed that vibrations and noise from wind turbines cause an array of detrimental health effects.

Anyone who has ever travelled through Wyoming comes away realising that the US state is an iconic symbol of wide-open spaces, intimidating mountain ranges and powerful winds.

Building on this natural bounty, it now seems likely that the state will soon be home to North America’s largest wind farm — as many as 1,000 turbines generating up to 2,500 megawatts of emissions-free electricity for 30 years.