Wind Fuels the North Sea’s Next Energy Boom

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601736/wind-fuels-the-north-seas-next-energy-boom/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Wind Fuels the North Sea’s Next Energy Boom[/font]

[font size=4]As oil declines, huge wind farms are providing electricity to Northern Europe.[/font]

by Richard Martin | June 29, 2016

[font size=3]For many years the capital of the United Kingdom’s offshore oil and gas industry, Aberdeen, Scotland, is in the midst of an energy transition that is transforming the North Sea from a fossil-fuel basin into the world’s center of offshore wind power.

With oil prices down to around $50 a barrel, as many as 50 North Sea oil and gas fields could be shut down this year, according to industry consultant Wood Mackenzie. Even if crude rebounds to $85 a barrel, oil companies are likely to abandon 140 North Sea fields over the next five years, the company says.

That contrasts sharply with the building boom in offshore wind turbines. Europe added a record three gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity in 2015, most of that in the North Sea. About 3,000 offshore turbines, totaling about 10 gigawatts of installed capacity, are operating there already. Annual additions are expected to average four gigawatts through 2030, bringing wind power to more than 60 gigawatts of capacity. In terms of output, offshore wind power accounts for about 1.5 percent of Europe’s total electricity generation today. That figure will rise to 7 percent by 2030, according to WindEurope, a Brussels-based industry association.

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[font size=1]Offshore turbines are beloved by many politicians, but whether they can provide clean, economical energy is doubtful.[/font]

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The scale of these projects continues to grow. The Gemini project, off the coast of the Netherlands, will have 150 turbines totaling 600 megawatts of capacity when it’s completed next year. Grander schemes are in the works: late last year, Britain’s secretary of energy and climate change greenlighted the vast Dogger Bank project, which will cover 360 square miles off the northeast coast of Scotland. Dogger Bank will comprise 400 wind turbines with a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, enough to power two million homes.

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[NNadir]

1. A boom? 60 "Gigawatts" at roughly 40% capacity utilization - I'm being overly generous - amounts...

...to 0.76 exajoules "by 2030."

This might as well be zero, since the planet will almost certainly be consuming 600 exajoules of energy "by 2030."

I have noted many times that most of the "by such-and-such" date crap handed out over 50 years of failure by the so called "renewable energy" industry has proved to be delusional.

I also note that wind turbines are lucky to have a twenty year lifetime before they need to be replaced, meaning that "by 2030" all of the existing wind turbines will soon be landfill bait.

Denmark, that offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole of a nation that markets itself as a wind paradise, just leased offshore oil tracts to 12 oil companies. It doesn't sound as if they have any intention of leaving the oil and gas business.

In fact, the only effect that the wind and solar industries have on the oil and gas industry is to perpetuate them. This is because, apparently, even though these industries include among their fraudulent representations that they're "enough to power x, y, z homes" they in fact power zero homes if the wind isn't blowing at night.

Most rational people - people who see through cheap marketing - do recognize that the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.

The fastest growing energy source on this planet is dangerous fossil fuels, and the fastest environmental trend we're seeing on this planet is the growth on dangerous fossil fuel waste concentrations in this planet. June 16, 2016 was 3.88 ppm over the same time in 2015.

The mere fact that we can still take seriously lies that conflate peak power with average continuous power - or better, energy - and that we still ignore those times that so called "renewable energy" is not working meaning we have to burn oil or gas or coal, is a stark representation of why we are in the awful state we're in.

So called "renewable energy" hasn't worked; it isn't working; and it won't work and another 50 years of disingenuous marketing by that industry isn't going to change a damned thing. The reality is that by failing to change, we are robbing the future of humanity; every generation to follow.