While the US dilly-dallies with its offshore wind power efforts – and has yet to have a single wind turbine planted in its coastal sea bottom – the UK is set to go gangbusters.
(The only offshore wind generators in the US are mounted on sailboats to charge batteries.)
The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed of the UK’s territorial waters, has announced the successful bidders for each of the nine Round 3 offshore wind zones. If planning and consents go through, and projects are built to capacity, the UK could have more than 32 gigawatts of new offshore wind power generation.
GigaWatts
The developers who have signed exclusivity zone agreements are:
- Moray Firth Zone, Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd which is 75% owned by EDP Renovaveis and 25% owned by SeaEnergy Renewables – 1.3 GW
- Firth of Forth Zone, SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd equally owned by SSE Renewables and Fluor – 3.5 GW
- Dogger Bank Zone, the Forewind Consortium equally owned by each of SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft – 9 GW
- Hornsea Zone, Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power, a consortium equally owned by Mainstream Renewable Power and Siemens Project Ventures and involving Hochtief Construction – 4 GW
- Norfolk Bank Zone, East Anglia Offshore Wind Ltd equally owned by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft – 7.2 GW
- Hastings Zone, Eon Climate and Renewables UK – 0.6 GW
- West of Isle of Wight Zone, Eneco New Energy – 0.9 GW
- Bristol Channel Zone, RWE Npower Renewables, the UK subsidiary of RWE Innogy – 1.5 GW
- Irish Sea Zone, Centrica Renewable Energy and involving RES Group – 4.2 GW
All of the developers are European companies.
The European Wind Energy Association says 45,000 jobs will be created in building the capacity. The UK government is more optimistic saying 70,000 jobs by 2020.
If fully built out by 2020, as hoped for, the new offshore wind will provide 25 percent of the UK’s power needs.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, “Our policies in support of offshore wind energy have already put us ahead of every other country in the world. This new round of licenses provides a substantial new platform for investing in UK industrial capacity. The offshore wind industry is at the heart of the UK economy’s shift to low carbon and could be worth 75 billion and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020. This announcement will make a significant and practical contribution to reducing our CO2 emissions and the Government will work with developers and The Crown Estate to support the growing offshore wind industry and help remove barriers to rapid development.”
What could be the first US offshore wind farm, Cape Wind, planned for Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts, has hit a new snag. Two American Indian tribes in the state say the turbines will disrupt their spiritual greeting of the sunrise and disturb ancestral burial grounds, now under water. The tribes want all of the Sound listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service, which determines such things, is considering their request.
