SOLUTIONS
Wind Power Goes Mainstream
Background
Clean, cheap, abundant, inexhaustible,widely distributed, climate-friendly. No other energy source has these characteristics. Wind harvested in the Great Plains states of Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota could provide enough electricity to power the entire nation. The wind over and around the Great Lakes, recoverable with current technology, could provide 80% of power currently generated by the U.S. and Canada from fossil fuels. At the end of 2009, land-based turbines were producing 35,000 megawatts of electricity — enough to meet the needs of 28 million American homes.
The largest single onshore wind farm in Europe, located on 28 square miles of moorland, generates 320MW of electricity and powers the city of Glasgow in Scotland. Denmark obtains a fifth of its total national electricity needs from wind and has a goal of 75% by 2025. The government of Scotland now asserts it can achieve 100% of its national electricity needs from renewables (essentially wind & tidal) by 2025.
In 2009, China became the biggest wind power market in the world, installing over 13,000MW (13 GW) and surpassing America or Europe. The country's wind power capacity is planned to increase dramatically to 230GW by 2020. The latter figure would be 13 times the capacity of the Three Gorges Dam and cut 410 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (150 million tonnes coal consumption). The growth of wind power in China is a bright spot in that country's conflicted efforts to curb its world-leading carbon gas emissions.
Although wind is an intermittent energy source, the generation of 25% of national electricity requirements from it does not require special back-up provisions. This intermittency issue will increasingly be mitigated through emerging energy-storage technologies such as pumped hydro or compressed air storage. These could make wind power "dispatchable" for use at peak times on the national electricity grid.
Offshore Wind
Offshore winds are strong and continuous, and suitable large turbines can take advantage of the greater wind power density offshore. For example, a 1000MW offshore wind farm, ‘London Array’, now under construction in the River Thames estuary, will power a quarter of the homes in Greater London. The UK Crown Estate’s "Round 3" leasing programme for large offshore wind development has a capacity of 32,000MW and will employ 6400 new 5MW wind turbines to deliver a quarter of the UK’s total electricity needs by 2020.
The U.S. has enormous unused capacity in terrestrial wind power. However offshore wind in the Great Lakes or off the East Coast states has the benefit of proximity and easy transmission to at least a dozen major American cities. The densely populated U.S. East Coast could meet close to half its current electric demand by relying on offshore wind turbines. North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia offer the most potential for easily captured wind energy, according to the Oceana study, which estimates that the 13 coastal states could together generate 127 gigawatts of power - that represents far more wind power than the United States currently generates.
The North Seas Countries’ Offshore Grid Initiative is designed to unleash the power of offshore wind for Europe's electricity markets. In the North Sea alone, 118 projected offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 68,000MW will deliver 13% of the electricity demand of 10 participating countries, via thousands of miles of undersea cable carrying high voltage direct current (HVDC) to electricity substations across the region. The 30 billion euro project, signed up to by Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland and Norway confirms the major role of offshore wind in Europe's future power generation. It will balance out a drop in wind power in one place with higher production elsewhere, providing the foundation for the future European supergrid.
Worldwide Wind Energy Report 2010
All the wind turbines installed worldwide by the end of 2010 can generate more than the total electricity demand of the UK, the sixth largest economy in the world--equalling 2.5% of global electricity consumption. The wind sector in 2010 had a turnover of 40 billion euros and employed 670,000 persons worldwide.
China became number one in total installed capacity and the centre of the international wind industry. It added 19MW in one year, accounting for more than 50% of the world market for new turbines. A major decrease in new installations was observed in North America, as the USA lost its number one position in total capacity to China. Western European countries showed stagnation, whereas there was strong growth in Eastern Europe.
Germany kept its number one position in Europe with 27,215MW in total installed wind power, followed by Spain with 20,676MW. The highest shares of installed wind power were found in three European countries: Denmark (21%), Portugal (18%) and Spain (16%). Asia accounted for the largest share of new installations (54.6%), followed by Europe (27.0%) and North America (16.7%).
The nuclear disaster in Japan and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will have a long-term impact on the prospects for wind energy. Governments need urgently to reinforce their wind energy policies. The World Wind Energy Association anticipates a global wind capacity of 600,000MW (600GW) by 2015.