Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action
Denmark is synonymous with wind energy. Last year the Nordic country met a massive 26% of its electricity demand with wind power, confirming its pole position as a beacon for wind energy as well as for its ability to integrate renewable electricity into the grid.
Already a world wind energy leader, Denmark plans to do better: by 2020 it wants wind energy to occupy a 50% slice of its electricity generation as part of its plans to phase out fossil fuels by 2050. With this target, set by the Danish centre-left coalition government last year, and a second target to deepen carbon dioxide cuts to 40% by 2020 – the country is a blueprint for transitioning to a renewable, climate-friendly, fuel-independent economy.
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Current wind turbine design is revolving around the 6 to 7 MW capacity range, with increasingly large rotor diameters.
But why go for a 7 MW turbine with a bigger rotor when a range of 3-5 MW designs are already available?
“There’s an offshore market kicking off,” Anders Bach Andersen of Vestas told Wind Directions magazine. “and in order to make that market reasonably competitive bigger turbines are needed. With bigger turbines you need fewer of them and you can reduce both capital and operating costs. But with fewer turbines you have potentially a smaller swept area at wind farm level so you need to compensate for that by equipping the machine with a larger diameter rotor.”
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By Megan Swieca
Offshore renewable energies are expanding to meet the EU’s 2020 renewable energy targets, but renewables are one of many activities competing for space at sea. Meanwhile, Europe’s maritime nations are currently operating under their own planning rules and guidelines, which often conflict with their neighbours and waste time and money.
This was the focus of a two year project, funded by the European Commission’s Intelligent Energy Europe programme and coordinated by EWEA, entitled SEANERGY 2020. The main findings and policy recommendations of the project were presented at a final workshop as part of the European Union Sustainable Energy Week. continue reading »
Some of the UK’s media is quick to publish anti-wind power stories, so it came as a surprise when this week British papers picked up on a new study by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change on onshore wind energy.
The paper entitled, ‘the case for and against onshore wind energy in the UK,’ says that onshore wind energy will be as cheap as fossil fuels by 2016 – just four years away.
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“I was born and studied in Bremerhaven, but when I left in 1996, there were no career opportunities there”, says Ronny Meyer.
BY the mid-1990s, the shipping and fishing industries that had traditionally dominated north-west Germany, where Bremerhaven is situated were dying, and there was felt to be no future.
“The unemployment rate was very high and anyone who had studied was leaving the city”, says Meyer.
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