Greenjobs Blog

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.

It’s obvious that current CO2 emissions will destroy a lot of ecosystems. But what most people don’t know is that even with our current targets and current plan, we will still kill some ecosystems and coral reefs as well. We still need to improve and modify our expectations, or economic losses would be substantial.

Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged

Some studies support that the economic value of coral reefs is upto $100bn annually. Also, the cost of forest lost each year is between $2 and $5 trillion.

Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged by the current CO2 rates: oceans on the world have absorbed about 50% of CO2 coming from fossil fuels combustion. Seas disolve a portion of CO2 too, which makes waters slightly more acid. Forests also play an important role absorbing greenhouse gases: they absorb 20%, which is a very cheap way of reducing CO2.

Indeed a major focus of the climate conference in Copenhagen this year will be to consider solutions to protect societies from the impact of climate change.

Current targets such as keeping the temperature no higher than 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, means carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere can’t surpass 450 parts per million (ppm). The current annual rate of  increase is 2ppm per year, and the current level is 387ppm. However these levels are already causing serious damage and anything above 350ppm may damage coral reefs, said Pavan Sukhdev, secondment to the UN Environment Programme.