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a number of countries will actually find themselves under-supplied when it comes to offshore installation capacity. China and Taiwan will also be hugely significant areas of offshore wind turbine farm growth.” Te UK currently leads the international
offshore wind farm market, its government having pledged a radical overhaul in renewable energy usage over the coming decade. A white paper issued by the Department of Energy and Climate Change in July 2011, entitled Planning our Electric Future: A White Paper For Secure, Affordable and Low-Carbon Electricity, highlights the fact that the UK government has set itself a new target of 18GW worth of offshore wind power by the year 2020, up from its previously agreed goal of 13GW. Tis figure is in line with the government’s stated aim of ensuring that 15% of all UK energy is generated by green sources by 2020. In tandem, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) plans to have some
40GW of wind power at its disposal by 2020. In 2009, wind power accounted for 39% of all new electricity-generating capacity across European Union (EU) member states, and this figure is set to increase with the further development of a Europe-wide renewable energy grid, which could create hundreds of thousands of additional jobs, a hopeful EWEA claims. Offshore wind power will also be crucial in realising EU plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95% by 2050; this goal is reportedly impossible unless wind power is harnessed to produce 50% of Europe’s electricity by that date.
US potential The US could also emerge as a prime candidate
for offshore wind farms,
although this may take a little while longer, West explains: “Tere is simply less available land mass within the European territories, which necessitates
the construction of offshore wind farms there, but the US does not suffer from this problem and has plenty of land it can utilise for wind farm projects before having to look to offshore solutions.” Additionally, North America’s current craze for fracking, in an attempt to source natural gas, may have put wind energy harvesting on the backburner for the time being. All the same, the Mid-Atlantic region of the US is estimated to have more than 60,000MW of offshore wind potential and is likely to form the base of a regional ‘super grid’ at some point in the future.
Carrying capacity West identifies several benefits to incorporating a dedicated, purpose- built vessel into turbine farm installation contracts. “The OWTIS works on the principle of minimising work conducted offshore, enabling engineers to put the
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