Offshore Wind Energy - Britain's Future

North Sea Oil has helped to boost the British economy over the past 30 or so years. But as time passes the oil and gas resources will shrink and eventually they will run out. It would therefore seem sensible to assume that as time passes, Britain will become more and more dependent on foreign countries for its energy resources. Yet that is not necessarily true, because Britain has great access to one resource that will never be depleted: Wind

If you live in Britain you know that it can get fairly windy, and hence wind farms seem like a good idea to help Britain achieve energy independence. Unfortunately a lot of people who live near wind farms complain that they are both ugly and noisy. There are also concerns over how it might negatively affect birds. So how can we make use of Britain’s wind energy potential whilst taking into account reasonable objections to wind farms? The solution is simple, build most wind farms offshore. Although offshore wind farms are more expensive to build and maintain, advances in technology are helping to mitigate this. The good news is that Britain has a lot of potential in this area, current estimates suggest that one third of Europe’s offshore wind potential is in British waters!

Already Britain has put this potential to good use as it produces more energy from offshore wind than any other country. Of the top 20 offshore wind farms, half are in British waters, the largest is the London Array off the coast of Kent and has a capacity of 630 Megawatts (MW). In December 2013 10% of Britain’s energy consumption came from offshore wind farms! The good news is that this will rise even further as Britain’s total offshore wind capacity is hoped to rise to a total of 28 Gigawatts (GW) by 2020, a rise of 15GW. There are several wind farms currently planned that would have a capacity of over 1200MW.

According to a report commissioned by the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (OREC), if Britain meets its goals and adds 15GW of capacity by 2020, there will be a massive benefit to the British economy. They estimate that £6.7 billion will be added to the British economy which result in 34,000 new jobs directly related to offshore wind and 150,000 new jobs in the wider British economy.

Of course there are major problems with replying on wind energy. Like most renewable energy resources, capacity and actual output are very different. This means that we cannot rely solely on wind energy, offshore or otherwise. We must also invest in other forms of renewable energy such as solar and tidal. Solar, much like wind, is unpredictable as its energy production is significantly reduced when there is significant cloud cover. Tidal energy is extremely regular, which makes it more reliable.

Some people may consider the idea of Britain producing all its energy from renewable sources nothing but a pipe dream, yet they are totally wrong. It is still several decades away but nonetheless is certainly achievable and most of it should come from offshore wind.

To see where the offshore wind farms are located, click here.

London Array, the world's largest offshore wind farm
by capacity (630 MW)
source: Telegraph