With the workers being evicted from the Vestas factory in Newport last Friday, the campaign to save Vestas and galvanise wind power in the UK continues. The protest called on Lord Mandleson, as Business Secretary and general governmental overseer, to ensure Vestas' presence in the UK remained economically viable. The government has already shown they are willing to bail out the banks and stimulate the car industry (Mandleson returns from holiday today to try and secure 5000 jobs at Vauxhall's Luton and Ellesmere Port plants), yet the wind power industry remains a sad indictment of years of government neglect.

Vestas' UK chief, Rob Sauven, claimed that for the company to remain economically viable in the UK it would need to be receiving 1GW worth of order a year. With Vestas controlling a quarter if the UK market this would require the UK to be adding 4GW of wind power every year. Last year the UK added only 0.5GW.

With the government wanting to achieve 15% of total energy production from wind power by 2020, as part of its green economic recovery plan to create tens of thousands of green jobs, Sauven's assessment illustrates a dire need to stimulate demand and ensure Britain's already late transition to a low carbon economy does not fail.