LONDON – The global offshore wind-power market could be worth up to 170 billion pounds ($273 billion) a year by 2050, the U.K. government-funded Carbon Trust said.
Britain is likely to take about 10 percent of the market, which includes installation, operation and maintenance of turbines at sea, the trust said today in a statement. The industry may employ 230,000 people in the country in 2050 and generate 100 billion pounds for the U.K. economy between now and then, the trust said.
ISO 9001:2026: A Practical Opportunity to Build for What’s Next
For Rhode Island manufacturers, ISO 9001 has been much more than a certificate on the…
Learn More
“Offshore wind is a strategically important economic asset for the U.K. that can deliver long-term growth and energy security,” said Benj Sykes, director of innovations at the trust. “If we seize this green-growth opportunity, the U.K. will benefit from hundreds of thousands of new jobs, a booming new export market and billions of pounds of business benefits.”
The U.K. has more offshore wind power capacity than any nation and is betting on the technology to help cut greenhouse gas emissions and meet European energy targets. The government’s plans have attracted manufacturers including Germany’s Siemens AG, Fairfield, Conn.-based General Electric Co. and Spain’s Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica SA, and developers such as Centrica Plc, RWE AG and E.ON AG.
Nuclear Power, CCS
The Carbon Trust’s central forecast is for global offshore wind capacity to reach 440 gigawatts by 2050, valuing the market at 56 billion pounds a year. According to the report, that could rise to 1,150 gigawatts and almost 170 billion pounds, depending on the growth of nuclear power and carbon capture and storage, or CCS, which traps greenhouse gases and stores them underground.
“The central scenario does assume substantial carbon capture and storage and substantial nuclear,” Jason Eis, senior strategy manager at the trust, said on Thursday in a telephone interview. “If those technologies are not acceptable to the public, or take a long time to come onstream, we move toward the high scenario.”
Eis said the study assumes governments are aiming to keep the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since industrialization, and that the U.K. aims to cut emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels in 2050. Government incentives for offshore wind are assumed to remain in place until at least 2020, he said.
Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the Randers, Denmark-based turbine-maker with the biggest share of installed offshore turbines, on Wednesday unveiled a new 7-megawatt machine for use at sea. It said the U.K. was among a cluster of countries in and near the North Sea where it may build a plant to make them.
U.K. Hubs
Gamesa, GE and Siemens have already announced plans for U.K. offshore wind turbine manufacturing and research hubs to cater for demand created by the country’s third round of seabed licensing.
In January 2010, the government awarded licenses for 32.2 gigawatts of offshore wind projects to companies including Centrica, RWE, Statoil ASA, EDP Renovaveis and Scottish & Southern Energy Plc. That added to about 8 gigawatts of concessions made in two previous licensing rounds.
Wind Power is a lie and a failure.
Most of the time it produces 15% or less of what is promised.
The UK spent the winter freezing in the dark because on the stormy days the turbines had to shut down and the cold nights there was no wind.
Turbines are a stupid scam. They subsidies attract graft and corruption. There wouldn’t be an industrial sized turbine in the world if not for the subsidies.