Greenjobs Blog

The recent announcement by The Crown Estate of the successful bidders for each of the nine zones in Round 3 of its offshore wind licensing programme could see a major boost for greenjobs in the United Kingdom. The round 3 wind sites have a total wind energy generation capacity of 32GW and they are expected to deliver a quarter of the UK’s electricity needs by 2020. It is envisaged that it will cost £75 billion to construct up to 6,400 new wind turbines as part of this renewable energy programme.

The developers who have signed exclusivity zone agreements are as follows:

1. Moray Firth Zone, Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd which is 75% owned by EDP Renovaveis and 25% owned by SeaEnergy Renewables – 1.3 GW

2. Firth of Forth Zone, SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd equally owned by SSE Renewables and Fluor – 3.5 GW

3. Dogger Bank Zone, the Forewind Consortium equally owned by each of SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft – 9 GW

4. 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

5. Norfolk Bank Zone, East Anglia Offshore Wind Ltd equally owned by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft – 7.2 GW

6. Hastings Zone, Eon Climate and Renewables UK – 0.6 GW

7. West of Isle of Wight Zone, Eneco New Energy – 0.9 GW

8. Bristol Channel Zone, RWE Npower Renewables, the UK subsidiary of RWE Innogy – 1.5 GW

9. Irish Sea Zone, Centrica Renewable Energy and involving RES Group – 4.2 GW

Commenting on the announcement, 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 licences 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.”

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, added: “Our Island has one of the best wind energy resources in Europe and today’s news shows we’re creating the right conditions for the energy industry to invest in harnessing it. This is one of the strongest signals yet that the UK is locked irreversibly into a low carbon, energy secure prosperous future.”

Roger Bright, Chief Executive of The Crown Estate said: “I am delighted that we have today announced the Development Partners for all nine Round 3 zones. We have been working very closely with Government and a wide range of other interests to secure commitments from investors in offshore wind energy in the UK. The Crown Estate will continue to play an active role working closely with our new partners to deliver their offer of 32 GW – which equates to a quarter of the UK’s electricity needs. A series of supply chain events will be held across the UK in January, February and March to support the delivery of this growth industry and these will be hosted by The Crown Estate, the UK Government and the devolved administrations.”

With wind power playing such a prominent role in the United Kingdoms future energy plans now is a great time to apply for a job in the growing wind Industry sector.

The world’s largest offshore wind farm was opened yesterday off the Danish coast. Dong Energy, the European energy giant, inaugurated the wind farm located 30 Kms off the Danish coast.

Dong Energy chairman, Fritz H Schur, said in the inauguration ceremony that this event is part of their strategy to reposition themselves as providers of renewable energy. “This inauguration of the world’s largest offshore wind farm underlines that Dong Energy is among the frontrunners in the field”, he said.

The offshore wind farm has 91 turbines, which are expected to provide enough energy for up to 200,000 homes. The wind turbines are manufactured by Siemens and they are 2.5 MW turbines (20 MW for the whole wind farm, according to predictions by Dong Energy) which will provide 800 GWh per year. Each turbine stands 114 m tall in waters up to 17 m deep.

The facility cost €470m to build: “Half of the world’s current offshore wind power capacity was constructed by us. This inauguration of the world’s largest offshore wind farm underlines that Dong Energy is among the frontrunners in the field”, Fritz H Schur said. The company is also involved in the building of the next world’s largest offshore wind farm, a 1 GW wind farm placed in the Thames Estuary.

The European Wind Energy Association predicted that wind energy will provide up to 10% of the EU’s electricity. These new offshore wind farms will help this prediction become true.

This is our first link compilation. We usually find interesting stuff on the Internet, and it’s a pity to let them leave unnoticed, so there is a small list with some news we have recently found. We will publish more later when we find more stuff to post about.

CO₂

• India will triple its CO₂ emissions in the next years, let’s hope for the best…
• Nicolas Sarkozy wants carbon tax, and it will rise with time.

Energy

• StatoilHydro launches first floating wind turbine, immature technology, but the way to go.
• Types of light bulbs and their efficiency, learn about the perfect illumination type.

IT

• Internet can help fighting climate change, it’s cleaner than old technologies.
• Japan will create 30% less power consumption CPUs, they will be solar CPUs.
• Save energy with your next computer, step by step to make an energy efficient PC.

Society

• 10:10 campaign to save energy, we joined it, take a look at 10:10.
• People won’t change for environment, at least in Katie’s campus.
• Tango, tiny electric car, half a car, but still a full car.

The future of Earth probably rests on new, unproven technology, unless our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successfull than they are right now. That means if we don’t stop CO₂ emissions reductions will be focused on fancy inventions from unproven technology, in order to cool the planet.

If we can’t reduce our emissions the only choice would be to use new inventions such as giant CO₂ scrubbers which will clean the air. Another solution could be to throw water into clouds so they become more reflective. More ideas go through installing giant mirrors into space so that solar rays cannot reach the Earths surface. We could even store CO₂ under the ground to prevent it reaching the atmosphere.

Probably they sound just like science fiction, but actually some of these are technically possible, according to the UK Royal Society. They could even succeed in reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere, but some can take decades to do so, and we still don’t know their impact on the environment nor their real economic cost.

Probably all those words can relief people and governments, but this doesn’t mean we have the luxury to stop our efforts to reduce emissions, there should still be further research and development in order to look for low risk and efficient solutions. We can think of these extreme solutions as a punishment for failure to fight climate change when we had the chance to do so.

There are a lot of different ways to make people aware of climate change, but this is probably the most creative we have seen. On the 2nd of September, one thousand tiny sculpted ice men melted as they sat on the stairs near the central Gendarmenmarkt square in Berlin, Germany.

1000 icy men melting in Berlin

This was performed by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), to make people aware about climate change, and specifically about the climate change effects on the Arctic. The Ice men were sculpted by brazilian artist Néle Azevedo. However, this is not the first time that she has done this, as she has been sculpting tiny ice men since 2005. In that moment she criticised the role of the monuments in cities, but nowadays her work is being used by environmentalists to spotlight that climate change can affect us in many different ways.

This has been a good idea which makes us think about how global warming can affect all of us.  Indeed melting  ice from the Arctic could make oceans rise more than 1 metre if current greenhouse gases emissions continue increasing.

These icy men started melting after 30 minutes, at 23 ºC, which was the current temperature in Berlin.

To avoid greenhouse gases emissions, pollution and energy waste, some countries in Europe are banning incandescent bulbs from stores. Current stock will be sold, and shops won’t be allowed to import or buy more incandescent bulbs. We will be forced to gradually switch to energy efficient illumination.

In the next three years, up to 27 countries in Europe will ban incandescent bulbs. We have already talked about this topic in our blog, explaining different types of light bulbs and lamps, but now we can only support this initiative.

However, as always, there are people who dislike this. For example, some people say this is being implemented because of the market interests of large corporations. Other people claim this is not the way to go, as CFL lamps contain mercury. Anyway, we will save energy no matter what, compared to the current situation.

The problem is that we’ll need to change sockets in some cases, and people seem to be worried about this, as some retailers in Germany have reported sales increases of about 600%.

The amount of energy saved will scale up to 40 Terawatt hours per year, enough to provide energy to a small country.