Went to a writing (newsletters) workshop yesterday in Daylesford Vic. This is spa and mineral springs country - a great destination for Melbourne folk on weekends.

Met interesting people at the workshop - all involved in their communities in various ways.

"Maureen" writes the newsletter for Hepburn REA  (Renewable Energy Association). That group has successfully organised a "wind park" (two turbines) for their community. They've got past all the hurdles and handed over the project to a "for-profit" cooperative that will implement and manage the wind park. The two turbines will add 4 Megawatts of wind-generated electricity to the grid, meaning 4 Megawatts less needs to be generated from brown coal. That's power for 2000 homes, 14,000 tonnes less of CO2 in the atmosphere.each year.

At around $10 million, this is a big community project, but these folk got their act together and it's all happening - note that less than a tenth of the cost will be spent by government (or rather us taxpayers) on this project, the rest by private investors including a lot of local residents. 

You can view the whole story at www.hrea.org.au .

And yes, I did learn a bit about writing newsletters too!