In energy crisis, UK opens world’s largest offshore wind farm

The world’s largest offshore wind power plant has come into full operation in the North Sea, almost 90km off the coast of England, and may provide a little relief from the serious energy crisis facing the country.

The project called Hornsea 2 can generate enough electricity to power about 1.3 million homes.

A decade ago, renewable energy sources accounted for 11% of all energy generated in the UK. By 2021, renewable energy was already 40% of the total, with the majority being wind.

But the UK is still heavily dependent on natural gas imports, whose price on the international market exploded with the Ukrainian War. So in the winter of this year, the price of gas and electricity for households will be three times higher than it was the previous winter.

The wind megaproject, however, has not started now. It is part of a giant wind farm under development by energy company Orsted and took five years to complete.

Hornsea 2 took the title of “largest in the world” from its neighbor Hornsea 1 and covers an area of ​​465km² (almost the size of the city of Porto Alegre). But it should soon lose the lead to other projects under construction in the North Sea.

Each of Hornsea 2’s 165 turbines is about 200m high above sea level and has propellers measuring 81m.

According to Patrick Harnett, director of the project, each rotation takes six seconds and generates enough energy to supply a home for a day.

Over the past decade, the size of wind farms and turbines has grown to the point where the cost of energy generated by these projects has fallen.

Currently, the cost of energy generated by natural gas is nine times higher than wind energy, says Simon Evans of Carbon Brief, a portal that monitors the renewable energy market.

In July this year, the United Kingdom held an auction for the construction of projects with the potential to generate 11 gigawatts of renewable energy, enough to power 12 million homes.

This measure is part of the British government’s goal of zeroing carbon gas emissions linked to energy generation by 2050, promoting a kind of “decarbonization” of the electricity system by 2035 – drastic reduction of generation by fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal. mineral.

The global energy crisis, fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has intensified the search for alternative energy sources to natural gas. After all, around 40% of the natural gas imported by Europe comes from Russia, a dependence that has increased the concern of governments in the current scenario of war.

But there are no easy or quick solutions.

Offshore wind power generation projects, for example, take around five years from the authorization of public agencies to full operation. But there are those who say that all these processes and decisions should be accelerated given the scale of the crisis.

“Onshore wind power is traditionally the cheapest form of energy, and you can get projects up and running in a year,” Melanie Onn of Renewable UK told the BBC.

“But we’re not doing that right now because current processes allow a single person to stop an energy farm (judicially). So the government needs to act and prioritize the energy issue.”

‘National crisis’ of energy

Rising energy prices portend a rough winter in the UK.

“The energy bill situation is a national crisis of the magnitude of the covid pandemic”, consumer expert Martin Lewis tells the BBC, while advocating that the government double its subsidy to compensate for the huge expected increase.

According to a survey conducted by the price comparison site Uswitch, almost a quarter of households are already in arrears, something that is expected to increase this winter.

“Half of British households will face energy poverty this winter if the government does not take action to alleviate the rise in bill prices,” warned EDF Energy UK managing director Philippe Commaret in an interview with the BBC.

According to him, a “catastrophic winter” is approaching for more than half of British households, who will have to allocate 10% or more of their income to pay for energy.

The price of gas and electricity for households will be three times higher this winter than in the past, according to estimates from one of the country’s biggest energy providers.

Meanwhile, small business owners who have just dealt with the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic are struggling to keep their doors open.

In the case of retirees, this situation can get even worse. Graham West, 68, has turned to food banks for the past six or seven weeks after seeing food and energy costs soar. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be eating,” he says.

For now, and until the government takes effective measures, the Don’t pay campaign, launched in June, calls on the British to boycott paying electricity bills from October 1, the day the increase in the price of energy.

So far, more than 110,000 people have joined the initiative via the web — and agreed to cancel their direct debit payments.

The Don’t Pay movement said the support received so far “demonstrates anger and frustration at a broken energy system that must be drastically transformed for the benefit of citizens”.

The organization demands a reduction in bills to an affordable level — and claims that millions of people will not be able to pay their energy bills this winter. For them, this campaign is the only way to force the government and energy companies to act.

The group says it will take no action unless a million people sign up — and that it is “consulting extensively” with experts in law and personal debt.

This text was originally published here.