Oil spill prompts wind energy race

With the Gulf of Mexico oil spill still not fully contained and proving detrimental to offshore drilling support, there has been an increased interest in offshore wind farm investment with European nations in particular looking to embrace the technology.

Triggering a potential 'wind energy race', the oil spill has made many former oil drilling supports such as California's Governor Schwarzenegger make u-turns on their policies. For European nations, already investigating renewable energy, the oil spill has only reinforce efforts and investment opportunities.

The wind energy sector has already seen a recent boom with the recently announced US$150 billion UK Round 3 Offshore Wind project. The project will see the UK hit the one GW milestone in terms of offshore wind energy production, with the country now having 336 installed turbines in 11 wind farms situated in UK waters.

Other countries on the continent have also embraced wind technology and have stepped up their plans for installing more turbines. Germany's first offshore wind farm, Alpha Ventus, placed in the North Sea, has just started generating up to 12MW of electricity, with aims of the country producing 25 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. This will be added to land based wind production of 26 GW.

France is also planning to construct a series of 10 offshore wind farms.

Utilising the North Sea

While Europe attempts to work on the difficult dilemma of weaning the infrastructure off fossil fuels, and inter-grating renewable energy into existing power grids, it is wind energy that is finding the most support despite large-scale solar projects happening all over the continent.

A recent report in particular cited the North Sea as a primary location for generating significant levels of renewable energy. According to the Offshore Valuation report, which makes comprehensive valuation of the UK's offshore renewable energy resource over the long-term that explicitly assesses electricity exports to Europe, the North Sea could potentially provide the equivalent of a billion barrels of oil a year in renewable energy.

With figures like that, it is not surprisingly that there are 83 proposed wind power projects in and around the North Sea, totalling US$330 billion which would provide an additional 68 GW of power.

While the UK is currently the main area of activity, significant investment is also being sought in other countries such as Germany, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Norway.

As such, it seems that wind energy is currently the renewable energy of choice for the continent.

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Is wind energy the future? | Poseidon - wind and wave energy combined | Are Europe's wind turbines in danger of collapsing? | Germany overtaken by China in wind-power market

 

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