Environment, Science & Technology

During a personal visit to Great Yarmouth, I came across two interesting environmental sites: an offshore wind farm and, located close by, a protected nesting area at North Denes for little terns. Without the good work of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) for more than 20 years, there is no doubt that this precious scrap of nesting area at North Denes for little terns would long ago have been lost to recreational use by people, pushing this rare and lovely bird a large step closer to being gone forever.  As you may have heard, “nature doesn’t do bail-outs.”.

The wind-farm off the beach, operated by E.On, has 30 windmills of 2 megawatts capacity each. The well-informed gentlemen at the visitor center told me that the windmills operate at about 28 percent of their theoretical capacity, that is, the actual power they produce through the year is 28 percent of what they could produce operating at maximum output 24 hours a day.

The RSPB warden at the little tern site said that E.On had carefully studied the nesting area before building the wind farm. The RSPB warden did not feel that the windfarm had had a negative effect on the little terns, who zoomed and soared while the nearby windmills spun.

To return to discussing our regular diplomatic work of understanding what is happening here on climate change, I want to tell you about some meetings that my colleagues and I have been attending this week. We routinely go to Parliament to listen to committee testimony, and of course we go to all sorts of meetings, large and small, to talk to people about what they think.
Everyone is of course very concerned about the economy and its effect on the renewable energy industry. Secretary of Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband told a Parliamentary committee this week that the financial crisis will hurt small energy firms more than big firms. This goes to emphasize one of our key points: climate change is not just an environmental issue. It’s an economic issue and it’s an energy issue as well.

On February 25, I visited a wind farm in Cumbria and had a long, informative discussion with a wind energy specialist there. I then visited the New and Renewable Energy Center (NaREC) in Blyth on February 26. NaREC works with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) on windmill blade certification and on blade testing. NaREC seeks to cover the gap between research and deployment of photovoltaic energy, wave energy, tidal energy, and esoterica such as grid management.

I was told that the UK has about 2 gigawatts of installed wind turbines, and will be up near 3 gigawatts by the end of 2008. This creates perhaps 3-4% of the electricity generated in the UK. 400 megawatts of that are offshore, which is where most specialists think the real future of UK wind energy lies, due to high wind velocities and relative ease of siting. I was also told that the UK needs 33 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2020 to help meet its renewable energy targets. With even a big windmill having a maximum of 7 megawatts of capacity, that will be a lot of windmills.

The eye deceives on size of the windmills. The towers can be up to 100 meters tall, with 150 meter diameters. I stood under a single blade at the NAREC test facility in Blyth and it was enormous – easily as long as a 747 wing.

I was surprised at the relative quiet of the windmills. On the day I was there, the wind was 30-40 miles an hour, and the windmills were making a noticeable but not oppressive whooshing sound. The wind specialist I spoke with said that he feels that thewindmills, once built, are quickly accepted by residents, and simply become part of the local landscape.