The UK government, along with many of its European counterparts, is currently considering applications for the development of wind power projects. However, if barriers to renewables were removed, wind power is capable of generating most of Europe's power, rather than just the current small percentage.

In February, British Energy announced that it had formed a joint venture company with Renewable Energy Systems (RES) Ltd to develop offshore wind power around the UK mainland coast. The new 50:50 joint venture company, Offshore Wind Power Limited, has made an application for its first project to the Crown Estate, which owns the seabed and will offer leases on sites for development.
Offshore Wind Power Limited brings together two of the most established power generating and engineering companies in the UK. RES is one of Europe's leading wind energy developers and part of the large British construction company Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. British Energy is the UK's largest power generator supplying over 20 per cent of the country's power.
"We are pleased to be sharing our power generation and supply expertise with one of Europe's leading wind energy developers to form a robust team for the development of offshore wind power. Adding generation from wind energy to our nuclear portfolio means the Company will continue to make an enormous contribution to the UK achieving and maintaining its climate change commitments," said British Energy's chief executive Peter Hollins.
His words were echoed by the thoughts of Ian Mays, managing director of RES: "We are confident that our bid to the Crown Estate is a strong one, given our combined expertise in wind power development, construction, power generation and supply. Offshore wind power has huge potential in the UK for generating clean and efficient electricity, thereby helping the UK meet its climate change commitments. RES has made a successful business out of developing onshore wind power across the world - we look forward to working with our new partners in this exciting new power market."
RES is already the largest UK-based wind energy developer with over 1100MW of capacity on its books at various stages of development in the USA, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. Plans this year include construction of the world's largest wind farm in Texas, with a capacity of 280MW.
The pre-qualification application to the Crown Estate marks the first stage in a development process which could last around four years. Following pre-qualification, Offshore Wind Power Limited will apply for consents, carry out surveys and enter a round of grant applications to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The UK Government recently signalled its support for offshore wind development with an announcement of additional funding in the form of capital grants.
The DTI anticipates that the offshore wind industry will generate 1.8 per cent of the total UK electricity supply by 2010. The longer-term potential, however, is far greater - a point not lost on the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA).

More ambition needed

The progress of wind energy around the world in recent years has been consistently impressive. By the end of 1999 almost 14000MW of electricity-generating wind turbines were operating in 50 countries. Of these, more than 9500MW were installed in the European Union, easily overtaking the 8000MW goal set by the EWEA for the year 2000.
1999 itself was a record year, with over 3000MW installed. The average annual market growth in Europe over the last seven years has been around 40 per cent, a figure only matched by the computer industry and the telecommunications sector. Since 1993 installed capacity has multiplied almost eight times, while the capacity built in 1999 (3150MW) was ten times bigger than in 1993 (330MW).
Various targets and projections for wind energy have been made by different organisations. The European Commission's goal is to achieve a 12 per cent penetration of renewables in the EU by 2010.1 This would mean increasing electricity production from renewable energy sources from 337TWh in 1995 to 675TWh. Within this, the goal for wind energy is 40000MW of installed capacity by 2010. The EWEA had set the same target, together with a progression of goals up to 2020 .
Others, however, have taken a more ambitious approach. The Danish consultancy BTM Consult expects the cumulative capacity in Europe to reach 35000MW by the end of 2004, and 70000MW in 2009.
Wind Force 10, a published by Greenpeace, the Forum for Energy and Development, and the EWEA, aims to show that wind power could supply 10 per cent of the world's electricity within two decades, even if overall electricity use doubles over that time.
The study is not a long-term forecast or prediction, but a feasibility exercise taking into account the physical limitations on wind power penetration and its potential industrial growth compared with other technology developments. In this 10 per cent global scenario, nonetheless, Europe is expected to install 220GW of wind energy by 2020, with an estimated 1000GW installed around the world in the same time.

Projections to 2010

Against this background, EWEA acting chief executive Arthouros Zervos has questioned on the organisation's web site whether it is now time to revise the Association's targets upwards. "It seems decidedly conservative for the EWEA to maintain its target of 40GW for the year 2010. Given the present state of development of wind energy, a more realistic figure is therefore proposed," he said.
Zervos believes that a more realistic approach would be to assume that annual installation of new capacity will continue to increase as it has throughout the last decade, but at a lower rate. In this scenario, the rate of installation of new capacity is assumed to increase, but at a reducing rate: a 10 per cent increase in annual installations is assumed for the year 2000, gradually falling to an annual increase of 3 per cent in 2010. This corresponds to a 35 per cent increase in total installed capacity in 2000 and 10 per cent in 2010.
This projection shows the installed wind energy capacity in the EU increasing to 33.7GW in 2005 and to 60.6GW in 2010. Correspondingly, the energy produced by wind will increase to 71.5TWh in 2005 and to 133.8TWh in 2010.
Another way of looking at this proposed new target for wind energy is to see how it will contribute to overall growth in the European power sector. According to the European Commission's study "EU Energy Outlook to 2020", demand for electricity is expected to expand by 1.7 per cent per year over the period 1995-2020. Total power capacity requirements are expected to increase by some 300GW during this period, and a similar amount of new capacity will be required for the replacement of decommissioned plants. Thus the EU is projected to build approximately 600GW of new plants between 1995 and 2020. Wind energy could cover a substantial part of this new capacity.
The contribution of wind energy to electricity production in the EU would increase from 1 per cent in 2000 to 2.6 per cent in 2005, 4.4 per cent in 2010 and almost 10 per cent in 2020. At the same time, wind energy could satisfy 39 per cent of the new net generation capacity required during the period 1995 - 2010, 57.8 per cent of the new net generation capacity in the period 2010 - 2020 and approximately half of the new installed generation capacity in the EU for the whole period 1995 - 2020.
"These projections also show that by the year 2020, European wind capacity would be 50 per cent higher than in the existing EWEA targets," noted Zervos.
Given the current distribution of wind energy in the 15 EU member states, the rates of growth in recent years, the wind potential of each country and their individual energy policies and targets, Zervos then went on to show a possible distribution of installed capacity in 2010.
The table shows both the projected capacities under the two scenarios and what has been installed over the last five years.
The leading countries in both scenarios are the same as now: Germany, Spain and Denmark. The main difference is that, given the size of the countries, their wind potential and the existing policies, greater development is foreseen for Germany and Spain. he additional increase between the two scenarios for a certain number of countries, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, is based on the expected rapid development of offshore wind during the second half of the decade. Other countries, such as the UK, France, Ireland and Greece, have the potential to increase substantially their projected installed capacity if the framework conditions become more favourable for renewables and existing barriers are removed."
"The extraordinary development of wind energy over the last decade has lead to a reconsideration of the projections and goals which were set for the European Union in the mid-1990s. It is therefore proposed that the EWEA adopts new, optimistic but feasible goals for Europe: 33GW for 2005, 60GW for 2010 and 150GW for 2020," concluded Zervos.