IN THE North Sea, wind power is booming. At the moment the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, with a capacity of 630MW, sits in the Thames Estuary. But the London Array, as this farm is known, will not hold the record for long. Another farm, over twice the size, is under construction off the coast of Yorkshire. Of the six countries with the most installed offshore capacity, five are part of the North Sea’s littoral. (The exception is China.) Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm that keeps a close eye on the industry, reckons the world’s offshore wind-generation capacity will quadruple by 2025.
Given the need to cut carbon emissions, that is welcome news. But, just because wind turbines produce little carbon dioxide does not mean they have no environmental impact. In a study posted on the arXiv, an online repository of scientific papers, Kaela Slavik and her colleagues at the Helmholtz Centre for...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/2i7STbz
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