John Webb

THE United Kingdom is now leading the race for European offshore wind power with its waters being the location for the installation of half of this year's crop of new wind farms.

It is also to be the home of four new demonstration sites where wind turbines of the future to be tested will include gigantic 10-megawatt (MW) machines whose rotor blades have a diameter of 150 metres.

Wind power is said to have been the globe's fastest growing renewable energy source for the last seven years, and the UK has been identified as the best market for offshore wind energy in the world.

It is said to be capable of using wind turbines to produce enough power over the next decade to meet nearly half its present energy needs.

Today, Europe as a whole has a total offshore wind turbine capacity of almost 2,400MW, and further expansions in offshore UK will provide a major boost to this.

The UK's new Energy & Climate Change Minister, Chris Huhne, predicts that wind power will make the UK a net exporter of energy again - as it was during the peak of oil and gas from the North Sea (http://www.decc.gov.uk/).

His belief has received backing from two influential sources. The organisation representing the UK's wind, wave and tidal energy sector, RenewableUK (formerly known as the British Wind Energy Association), claims that the industry is on the road to success.

Its figures show that during the first half of 2010 the UK completed one gigawatt (GW) of installed offshore wind power capacity, accounting for about 40 per cent of pan-European capacity.

A RenewableUK spokesman said the UK also had a "development pipeline" totalling 49GW with a potential to deliver 150 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity a year out of the country's total net consumption of about 315 TWh.

The Offshore Valuation Group - a coalition of government and industry organisations - also concludes in its recent report that the use of a third of the energy resource around the UK shores could generate the electricity equivalent of one billion barrels of oil annually, matching North Sea oil and gas production, and allowing the UK to become a net exporter of electricity by 2050.

The UK is already using the wind to produce enough energy to power more than two million homes.

Energy statistics reveal that the country achieved a 31-per-cent increase in wind power generation in 2009 and this form of renewable energy now accounted for 2.5 per cent of all UK electricity production.

The 9,304GW/hours of electricity produced in a year by wind power is enough to meet the needs of a population living in about 60 per cent of London homes.

The Brussels-based European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) is also predicting "significant growth" of wind power in the UK, particularly offshore, with Germany and the UK expected to be the largest markets in Europe for turbine installations.

In a report on key trends and statistics in the first half of 2010, the EWEA said that UK waters were by far the busiest in terms of new wind farms, and the amount of turbines and projects completed.

Eight new UK wind farms are under construction, involving a total of 147 turbines that are already producing 188MW of electricity - set to rise to 2,437MW when other projects are completed, eclipsing the performance of other European developers such as Belgium, Denmark and Germany.

The EWEA update shows that in the first six months of 2010, 118 offshore wind turbines had been connected, adding 333MW to Europe's wind power capacity.

These formed six new wind farms - three in the UK, two in Denmark and the sixth in German waters. Of another 151 turbines totalling 440MW capacity in seven other farms and awaiting connection to the grid, three are again located in UK waters with two in Denmark and single farms in Belgium and Germany.

Up to now in Europe, there are 948 offshore turbines in 43 fully operational offshore wind farms that together have a capacity of 2,396MW.

The UK capacity - reached earlier this year with 11 wind farms using 336 turbines - has achieved a landmark figure of 1,000MW (1GW), capable of meeting the electricity needs of 684,000 homes.

With plans to boost the present capability 40-fold in the coming years, RenewableUK says this is "sufficient to provide the bulk of the UK's electricity" and could attract a workforce of 45,000 (http://www.bwea.com/).

In the light of the UK achieving its 1GW capability from offshore wind, RenewableUK's chief executive Maria McCaffery said: "The UK offshore wind industry has come of age...

"In the last 10 years we have built a brand-new world-leading industry sector that will create long-term value for this country. In the first quarter of this year [2010] alone, half a billion pounds of private investment has been invested directly into offshore wind in the UK," she added.

"The opportunity now is to build on this position of global leadership to develop the industrial and service supply chain to provide the equipment and skills that will embed Britain's competitive advantage in marine renewables," said Maria McCaffery.

"To have deployed 1,000MW of offshore wind plant in 10 years, and with pioneering technology, is a tremendous step forward."