Europe’s world coal burning peaked in 1996. North Sea oil and gas fields are beginning to run down, peak oil looms on the horizon, supplies from the Middle East and Russia cannot be seen as entirely secure and nuclear energy has its own safety and pollution issues. The wind is blowing favourably for renewable energy.
During the first week of January 2018, as Storm Eleanor was blowing, there was a new record set for the generation of wind energy in Europe, when a total of 2128 Gigawatt hours (a measure of the output of large power stations) was generated by wind energy. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, wind energy delivered on average 20 per cent of Europe’s electricity. And, in October 2017, wind power sources provided 24.6 per cent of total electricity – enough to power 197 million European households.
Europe is rapidly becoming a major force for renewable energy. Wind power is now Europe’s second largest source of electricity, behind gas-fired power plants, after it made up almost a fifth of all newly installed electricity capacity across the EU last year.
The number of new wind turbines being installed across the EU increased by 20 per cent from the previous year, and set new records in Germany, the UK and France. As of December 2017, installed capacity of wind power in the European Union totaled 169,3 gigawatts.
The growing importance of wind energy across Europe is partly the result of policy decisions take almost a decade ago. In 2009, the European Council adopted an energy and climate target to reduce EU-wide emissions of greenhouse gases to 80 per cent less than 1990 levels by 2050. This target included a directive for EU member states to fulfill at least 20 per cent of their energy needs with renewables by 2020. Denmark regularly gets more than 100 per cent of its energy from wind, while wind frequently provides Germany more than half of its electricity.
WindEurope, formerly the European Wind Energy Association, has estimated that 230 gigawatts (GW) of wind capacity will be installed in Europe by 2020, consisting of 190 GW onshore and 40 GW offshore. This amount of wind energy will generate 14–17 per cent of the EU’s electricity, avoiding 333 million tonnes of CO2 per year and saving Europe €28 billion a year in fuel costs. Wind energy is now cheaper than nuclear energy in the UK.
Offshore expansion
All is not completely blowing in wind energy’s favour, however. The British government ruled out new onshore wind farms in England in its 2015 election manifesto, so energy companies were forced offshore, making the UK the world’s offshore leader. The price of building offshore wind farms has fallen by nearly a third since 2012 as the technology matured, although it is still more expensive than constructing and maintaining wind farms on land.
Offshore wind farms are more problematic than onshore wind because they require bigger and more robust turbines, and have higher levels of maintenance and much greater installation costs than onshore wind.
As they have moved offshore, wind turbines have grown steadily larger, as have the wind farms to which they belong. And the next generation of wind farms are set to be even larger.
Located 120km off the Yorkshire coast, Hornsea Project One will span a huge area of approximately 407 square kilometres, which is over five times the size of the city of Hull. The offshore wind farm will use seven megawatt (MW) wind turbines, with each one 190 metres tall – larger than the Gherkin building in London. When completed, the project will become the world’s first gigawatt scale wind farm, comprising up to 240 turbines with a capacity of up to 1.2GW. Scheduled to commence operation by 2020, the wind farm will have the capacity to supply over 1 million UK homes with electricity.
The wind farm is being built by Danish renewables giant Ørsted Energy (formerly Dong Energy – short for Danish Oil and Natural Gas). Ørsted Energy is named after the Danish scientist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields.
Weighing in at 800 tonnes, the first monopile – upon which the turbines stand – is 65m long and 8.1m wide, and there are a further 173 to follow, providing the strength and sturdy foundation for the 190m structures. For every one, the bright yellow transition piece, above-water tower, nacelle and blades will all follow to make up the entire turbine installation.
The process, which will be regularly repeated in the weeks and months ahead – ramping up with the addition of the substations and cable linking – forms the initial phase of the intensive, co-ordinated delivery of what will emerge as the world’s largest offshore wind farm being operated and maintained from Grimsby.
The city of Hull’s role, too, in assembly and manufacturing will kick in, with Ørsted having selected Siemens to deliver the 7MW turbines. A total of 500 jobs are being created by the Danish giant as it builds out a strong pipeline of projects off the Humber, while up in Teesside, the monopile manufacturing base will be at full capacity until autumn this year.
Alongside the installation of the 174 monopiles, Ørsted is also at work laying the subsea cables and electricity substation for the site. Three high voltage subsea power cables will carry electricity from three offshore substations to shore.
Ørsted Energy is also under contract to build an additional offshore wind farm, also in the UK, with a planned capacity of 1386 MW when it opens in 2022. This windfarm – the Hornsea Two project – will be situated 90 kilometres off the Yorkshire coast. Between them, the two projects will have a potential generating capacity of nearly 2.6GW, providing power to more than two million homes.
North Sea Power Hub
If this is not enough to convince sceptics of the power of wind, Dogger Bank, in the middle of the North Sea, has been identified as a possible site for an artificial island that could supply renewable energy to 80 million people in Europe by 2027.
The ‘North Sea Wind Power Hub’ would send electricity via long-distance cables to Britain and the Netherlands, and later to Denmark, Germany, Norway and Belgium. Dutch power grid operator TenneT, the project’s backer, recently released a report claiming the island will be billions of euros cheaper than conventional windfarms and international power cables.
So, the answer to the energy supply challenge in Europe is now becoming increasingly clear. A transition is required from an energy supply dependent on fossil fuel combustion to a cleaner, smarter alternative, based on natural renewable resources and indigenous supply. The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.
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