Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Scotland earning a few bob from their on-shore wind, and the EU planning to increase off-shore wind tenfold.

Onshore wind delivers £106m a year to Scots economy

Onshore wind contributes more than £106m (€124m) a year to the Scottish economy through business rates payments, according to research from Scottish Renewables.

EU to supercharge offshore wind with 150GW target

The EU, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are to launch an initiative to increase offshore wind capacity tenfold to 150GW by 2050.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) will make the announcement today at the North Sea Summit with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Belgian Prime Ministers Alexander De Croo, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

From a 15GW capacity today to 150GW in 28 years — it will provide 150 million European households with their annual electricity demand.

The move is also expected to connect all the participating countries through interconnections and green hydrogen pipelines to ensure greater security of supply.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Scotland earning a few bob from their on-shore wind, and the EU planning to increase off-shore wind tenfold.

Onshore wind delivers £106m a year to Scots economy

Onshore wind contributes more than £106m (€124m) a year to the Scottish economy through business rates payments, according to research from Scottish Renewables.

EU to supercharge offshore wind with 150GW target

The EU, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark are to launch an initiative to increase offshore wind capacity tenfold to 150GW by 2050.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) will make the announcement today at the North Sea Summit with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Belgian Prime Ministers Alexander De Croo, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

From a 15GW capacity today to 150GW in 28 years — it will provide 150 million European households with their annual electricity demand.

The move is also expected to connect all the participating countries through interconnections and green hydrogen pipelines to ensure greater security of supply.

Sounds like integrated green hydrogen which is interesting.  Shame only countries in NW Europe are mentioned, surely wind turbines more geographically spread have higher value output?

Coastalwatch

Welcome news and certainly needed, but six years and 900 jobs is going to require some considerable investment.

I can't help but wonder how many GW's of energy will be required to construct it and once built how long it might take to return the compliment. Hopefully, someone will soon show my fears have no sound basis!

Drax applies to expand Cruachan pumped hydro storage plant

Drax has applied to expand its Cruachan pumped hydro storage plant under Section 36, creating long-duration storage that could boost the rollout of renewables.

The energy firm announced its intent to create a new cavern, increasing the capacity of the site that sites in the Ben Cruachan mountain in Argyll, in June 2021.

If approved, Drax could increase the site's capacity from 600MW to 1.04GW by hollowing out a second cavern and tunnels. Construction is expected to take six years and create around 900 jobs across the supply chain.

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/drax_applies_to_expand_cruachan_pumped_hydro_storage_plant

gefnew

Alderney looks at wind turbines to cost fossil fuel use - BBC Website
Just the beeb headline without spell check.

Martyn1981

Bit of news on UK support for floating off-shore wind, and the creation of a fund to help.

BEIS launches £160m UK floating fund

The UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is inviting expressions of interest into a £160m floating offshore wind fund.

The Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme (FLOWMIS) will provide government funding to boost floating offshore wind capability around the UK at sites in Scotland, Wales and elsewhere by supporting manufacturers and giving private investors the confidence to back this emerging sector which is expected to rapidly expand in the years ahead.

Around 15GW of floating offshore wind in Scottish waters has been announced through the ScotWind leasing round and a further 4GW is to be leased off the Welsh coast in the Celtic Sea.

Combined, these could require well over a thousand floating wind foundations, presenting the UK with a huge opportunity to establish a world leading sector capable of bringing down technology costs and delivering floating offshore wind at scale.

Coastalwatch

Hi Mart, now that's some coincidence as it was only this morning that Mike Smyth of community based Energy4all announced that in partnership with Orsted, Falck Renewables and Bluefloat Energy they had been successful in securing three of the five contracts on offer through the latest Scotwind leasing round for floating wind farms!

The quote from below comes from last year when the MOU was signed.

Energy4All Joins Partnership in bid to Take Community Ownership Offshore

Inverness, UK, 27 September 2021 – The Falck Renewables, Ørsted and BlueFloat Energy consortium bidding in the latest ScotWind leasing round has joined forces with community ownership experts Energy4All to champion inclusive opportunities for Scottish communities to own a stake in offshore wind developments.

Energy4All has signed an exclusive Memorandum of Understanding to co-operate in the delivery and execution of a community ownership scheme which will start by carrying out a public consultation and designing a new framework allowing residents of Scotland and Scottish communities to share the financial benefits of the floating wind farms the consortium has applied to build.

zeupater

Hi

.... just thinking of all the things that could go wrong over time with such a project    & where I'd prefer to better (as in risk mitigation!) spend public funding other than to float a fleet of 'unstable & fragile' unmanned boats to deliver decentralised energy to consumers .....

HTH-Z

QrizB

In other news ...

HSBC suspends banker over 'nut job' climate comments, say reports

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61519111

HSBC has reportedly suspended a senior executive who accused central bankers and other officials of exaggerating the financial risks of climate change. Last week, Stuart Kirk, a leader in the bank's responsible investing team, said: "There's always some nut job telling me about the end of the world." At the weekend, HSBC's boss Noel Quinn posted on social media that he did not agree "at all" with the comments. The firm declined to comment on reports that Mr Kirk has been suspended. Mr Kirk, who is global head of responsible investing at the bank's asset management division, was suspended pending an investigation into a speech he made at an event last week, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the story.

Martyn1981

But QrizB - "What if it's all a big hoax and we create a better World for nothing?" - Joel Pett 2009.

zeupater

zeupater said:

Hi

.... just thinking of all the things that could go wrong over time with such a project    & where I'd prefer to better (as in risk mitigation!) spend public funding other than to float a fleet of 'unstable & fragile' unmanned boats to deliver decentralised energy to consumers .....

HTH-Z

Hi

... Fleshing out the background for the issues raised - the basis of concern is related to a number of published articles I read a while ago ... eg .... Yichao Liu et al 2020 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1618 022049 - ( https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1618/2/022049/pdf )

Abstract ....

"Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) are more prone to suffer from faults and failures than bottom-fixed counterparts due to the severe wind and wave loads typical of deep water sites. In particular, mooring line faults may lead to unacceptably high operation and maintenance costs due to the limited accessibility of FOWTs. Detecting the mooring line faults is therefore critical, but the application of Fault Detection (FD) techniques has not been investigated yet."

... which generally tend to conclude that as the tall turbines act as levers with the fulcrum being at ~sea level, the force of the wind at the top of the blades (effort) creates a considerably increased spot load on the anchoring points & lines when the wind is gusting thus creating potential failure modes related to the anchoring systems employed ... for example, there are numerous occasions where considerably more stable (shape/design) oil/gas rigs & platforms have suffered broken moorings and drifted well off station causing concerns to other assets in the general area - consider the effect of this with a rogue ~180m high floating turbine drifting/pitching/rolling in the middle of a farm consisting 10's if not 100's of still anchored and rotating ~180m high clones ....

... the worrying text in the paper referenced is that as of 2020 the claim is made that ... "the application of Fault Detection (FD) techniques has not been investigated yet." !! ... hence my comment ... " just thinking of all the things that could go wrong over time with such a project" !!!

HTH-Z -