As youth unemployment rises in the UK, the need for green jobs and training for young people becomes ever more essential, writes Christopher Ibbet from the UK Youth Climate Coalition…

The UK’s Office for National Statistics recently released its latest figures on unemployment, showing that in last quarter of 2011, 28,000 more people became unemployed, while the number of 16 – 24 year olds out of work rose to 1.04 million.

“Wind farms are noisy.” “We can’t rely on wind because it is intermittent.” “Wind farms are dangerous to human health.” “Wind doesn’t work – wind farms are inefficient as they are only operational 30% of the time.”

These are some of the myths of wind energy that are thoroughly debunked by a new website set up by British Wind at www.british-wind.co.uk. The sentiments above are the type of ill-conceived, badly-informed ideas on wind energy that newspaper readers are subjected to with increasing frequency in the British media.

Ireland is on the threshold of becoming an exporter of energy. Having traditionally imported fuel or burned locally-produced peat to provide energy, Ireland is now looking at bringing in €6bn a year in export revenues in less than a decade.

The source of this potential “windfall” is the increasing number of wind farms around the country. This growth is encouraged by the government, whose Minister for Energy Pat Rabbitte today announced the opening of a new support scheme for renewable energy at the Irish Wind Energy Association’s annual conference in Dublin.

A letter signed by 101 public figures in the UK – including Sir Richard Branson – has been sent to Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to promote the benefits of renewable energy in the budget due to be announced this Wednesday, the Guardian reported.

The letter is widely seen as a rebuff to another letter signed by 101 Members of Parliament who called for an end to support for wind energy

The March budget is one of the “biggest opportunities to tackle climate change in the UK…we must ensure it encourages investment rather than create uncertainty and delay further serious investment in the renewable sectors. As a country, we need to be better prepared to deal with rising energy prices,” Branson said, reported in the Guardian.

The wind power industry in England has just published a Protocol statement that will see communities living near future onshore wind farms larger than 5 MW realise significant additional economic benefits.

“We, as an industry, are committed to ensuring that a proportion of the benefits delivered by these projects are realised within the communities that live near them,” noted a study by the renewable energy trade association and EWEA member RenewableUK.

The association said on Wednesday that a community benefit scheme will receive support equivalent to a minimum value of at least £1,000 (€1,185) per megawatt of installed capacity annually.