More Offshore Wind Power For Britain  

The BBC has an article on a British plan to build enough offshore wind turbines to power all British homes by 2020 (not a bad move when you are running out of gas) - "Huge expansion for wind turbines".

There could be more than two offshore wind turbines per mile of UK coastline under plans being set out by ministers. Business Secretary John Hutton says he wants to open up British seas to allow enough new turbines - up to 7,000 - to power all UK homes by the year 2020. He acknowledged "it is going to change our coastline", but said the issue of climate change was "not going away".

The thrust of the idea was backed by Tory Alan Duncan: "We're an island nation. There's a lot of wind around." Mr Duncan added, on BBC One's Politics Show: "We should use that offshore capacity for generating electricity that's clean and secure. "So yes, I think it's inevitable and a good thing that there will be more offshore wind." ...

Mr Hutton accepted that, as things stood, the amount of energy he hoped to see produced would need 7,000 turbines. But he would not give a specific figure, saying that the next generation of turbines could be bigger and generate more energy. "Offshore wind is a major untapped resource for us," he said. "It is going to change our coastline, yes for sure. There is no way of making that shift to a low carbon technology without there being change and without that change being visible and evident to people. "We've got a choice as a country whether we rise to the challenge... or stick our head in the sand and hope it (climate change) goes away. It is not going to go away."

The New York Times has a look at a wave energy project of the Oregon coast - "Efforts to Harvest Ocean’s Energy Open New Debate Front

Chris Martinson and his fellow fishermen catch crab and shrimp in the same big swell that one day could generate an important part of the Northwest’s energy supply. Wave farms, harvested with high-tech buoys that are being tested here on the Oregon coast, would strain clean, renewable power from the surging sea.

They might make a mess of navigational charts, too. “I don’t want it in my fishing grounds,” said Mr. Martinson, 40, who docks his 74-foot boat, Libra, here at Yaquina Bay, about 90 miles southwest of Portland. “I don’t want to be worried about driving around someone else’s million-dollar buoy.”

The coastal Northwest is one of the few parts of the West where water is abundant, but people are still fighting over it. Amid concerns about climate change and the pollution caused by generating electricity with coal and natural gas, Oregon is looking to draw power from the waves that pound its coast with forbidding efficiency.

It might seem a perfect solution in a region that has long been ahead of the national curve on alternative energy. Yet the debate over the potential damage — whether to the environment, the fishing industry or the stunning views of the Pacific — has become intense before the first megawatt has been transmitted to shore. ...

Major technical and financial obstacles remain, and energy generated from waves is not expected to start contributing to the electrical grid in the United States for several years. Yet like wind energy in its early stages in the 1980s, wave energy is considered promising, perhaps inevitable, with the potential to one day provide 5 percent to 10 percent of the nation’s energy supply, according to some projections.

Oregon, Washington and Northern California, where the Pacific Ocean first meets land in the contiguous United States after gathering momentum for thousands of miles beneath westerly winds, have the potential to generate four times as much energy from waves as states on the East Coast, according to studies by the Electric Power Research Institute.

All of the permits approved have been in Oregon, where transmission lines run close to the coast, making them easier to tap into, and where state government encourages businesses to explore new forms of energy.

With state support, Oregon State University is testing a wave energy buoy it plans to deploy off the coast here next spring.

Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company with an office in Portland, has conducted tests near the Yaquina Head lighthouse here, and has a permit to do more testing near Coos Bay. Ocean Power Technologies, the company planning the project near Reedsport, has received a preliminary permit to test the potential for a wave farm it says could generate up to 50 megawatts of electricity. A typical coal-burning plant produces about 600 megawatts.

Several kinds of technology are being tested. Some would use buoys that hold turbines turned by waves. One type being tested at Oregon State would create energy from the relative movement between a fixed spar and a buoy that rises and falls with waves.

The Reedsport project could transmit energy to shore through an outflow pipe once used by a now-defunct timber mill. That convergence of old economy and new reflects what supporters of wave energy say is fitting symmetry for a region that has evolved from an extraction-based economy built on logging to one striving to use natural resources in ways that are environmentally sound.

PhysOrg has an article on a rather ambitious proposal for a hydro electric project - "50 gigawatts of electrical power could be released by damming the Red Sea". Beat that Moses.

Damming the Red Sea could solve the growing energy demands of millions of people in the Middle East and alleviate some of the region's tensions pertaining to oil supplies through hydroelectric power. Equally, such a massive engineering project may cause untold ecological harm and displace countless people from their homes.
In the Inderscience publication International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Roelof Dirk Schuiling of Utrecht University in The Netherlands and his colleagues discuss the costs and benefits of one of the potentially most ambitious engineering projects ever.

Present technology allows us to shift and shape the earth on a relatively large scale and to control lakes and reservoirs for hydroelectric power generation. In the near future, however, it might be possible to build dams large enough to separate a body of water as large as the Red Sea, from the world oceans. A similar macro-scale engineering project is already planned for the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance of the Persian Gulf. This seawater barrier will exploit the evaporative cycle and influx of seawater to generate vast quantities of electricity.

Geochemical engineer Schuiling suggests that a dam Bab-al-Mandab could be used to stem the inflow of seawater into the highly evaporative Red Sea with the potential of generating 50 gigawatts of power. By comparison, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear station in the US has an output of just 3.2 gigawatts.

"Such a project will dramatically affect the region’s economy, political situation and ecology, and their effects may be felt well beyond the physical and political limits of the project," says Schuiling.

Links:

* Brisbane Times - Kyoto turnaround 'worth billions' for clean energy industry
* Newswise - V2G Car Generates Electricity, and Cash
* Clean Break - Cyrium snags funding, aims for 45% efficient solar
* Cleantech.com - Eberhard out, Drori in at Tesla
* Cleantech.com - ECOtality grabs another fast charger co.
* Solar Energy News - BioSolar Advances Plastic Film Solar Cell Production
* Steel Pipe - NEC Develops New Bioplastic That Realizes Higher Heat Conductivity Than Stainless Steel
* EcoStreet - Winner of the Worst EU Greenwash Award: German Atomic Forum
* SMH - Cuts needed for survival of civilisation: Gore
* Wired - Group Touts Seaweed As Anti Global Warming Weapon
* Technology Review - Lightning Bolts within Cells: A new nanoscale tool reveals strong electric fields inside cells. 15 million volts !
* Joe Bageant - The similarities of the US and Australia
* Joe Bageant - Left and right must ignore differences
* Cryptogon - Windpower to Supply Electricity to All of Britain’s Homes. There is no pleasing some people.
* Wikipedia Vision - Anonymous edits to Wikipedia (almost) in real-time (via Idleworm).