Emacs Init: Set Default File Encoding

Put this in your Emacs Init File:

;; UTF-8 as default encoding
(set-language-environment 'utf-8)
(set-default-coding-systems 'utf-8)
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)

;; add this especially on Windows, else python output problem
(set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)

Alt+x list-coding-systems to see possible valid values.