Britain Launches Energy Generation From Its Seas
Britain's seas will power sustainable energy for the island nation. What wonderful environmental news on this Easter weekend!
As The Independent reports:
"Britain is set this week to enter a new age, generating energy directly from the seas that surge around its shores. On Saturday a strange, 122ft- long contraption – looking like an upside-down windmill – will set off from the Belfast dock that built the Titanic to produce the first electricity ever brought ashore from British tides.
"The device – the first of its kind anywhere in the world – is expected to start a revolution which could lead to our island nation getting a fifth of its power from its surrounding waters, and to the far north of Scotland becoming 'the Saudi Arabia of marine energy'.
"Later this year, in another global first, a wave energy power station developed by an Edinburgh firm is to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. Next year, an even bigger one, off Cornwall, is expected to start feeding electricity into the national grid, and yet another is planned for the Orkneys."
The British government was not initially a supporter of sea power's sustainable energy potential.
As the article states, "In the 1980s the then Department of Energy killed off promising proposals for exploiting the waves amid evidence that it did so because they threatened its (never realised) plans to expand nuclear power.
"And the Government's official environmental advisers – the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Countryside Council for Wales – have warned that the barrage would 'cause irreversible impacts" to the estuary's 'internationally important habitats' for wildlife and to its 'unique ecology'.
However, the upside-down windmill "sits in the tidal currents like an inverted windmill, capturing some of the energy by letting the water, rather than air, turn its sails as it flows....is expected to have far less impact on wildlife and the environment. But its technology's potential is no smaller. A report by the Sustainable Development Commission last year estimated that exploiting Britain's tidal currents could generate at least 5 per cent of the nation's electricity. Other authorities put it even higher."
Solar power, wind power, and sea or tidal power are the sustainable energy wave of the present and future. In the United States, there could be sea power generation on the coasts, wind power in the center and solar power throughout the country. Nuclear power is too dangerous and not the answer.
If the United States doesn't get on board with serious sustainable energy development now, it will fall behind, as it has with Internet and broadband technology, which will be detrimental to the nation, the planet, and its inhabitants.
As The Independent reports:
"Britain is set this week to enter a new age, generating energy directly from the seas that surge around its shores. On Saturday a strange, 122ft- long contraption – looking like an upside-down windmill – will set off from the Belfast dock that built the Titanic to produce the first electricity ever brought ashore from British tides.
"The device – the first of its kind anywhere in the world – is expected to start a revolution which could lead to our island nation getting a fifth of its power from its surrounding waters, and to the far north of Scotland becoming 'the Saudi Arabia of marine energy'.
"Later this year, in another global first, a wave energy power station developed by an Edinburgh firm is to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. Next year, an even bigger one, off Cornwall, is expected to start feeding electricity into the national grid, and yet another is planned for the Orkneys."
The British government was not initially a supporter of sea power's sustainable energy potential.
As the article states, "In the 1980s the then Department of Energy killed off promising proposals for exploiting the waves amid evidence that it did so because they threatened its (never realised) plans to expand nuclear power.
"And the Government's official environmental advisers – the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Countryside Council for Wales – have warned that the barrage would 'cause irreversible impacts" to the estuary's 'internationally important habitats' for wildlife and to its 'unique ecology'.
However, the upside-down windmill "sits in the tidal currents like an inverted windmill, capturing some of the energy by letting the water, rather than air, turn its sails as it flows....is expected to have far less impact on wildlife and the environment. But its technology's potential is no smaller. A report by the Sustainable Development Commission last year estimated that exploiting Britain's tidal currents could generate at least 5 per cent of the nation's electricity. Other authorities put it even higher."
Solar power, wind power, and sea or tidal power are the sustainable energy wave of the present and future. In the United States, there could be sea power generation on the coasts, wind power in the center and solar power throughout the country. Nuclear power is too dangerous and not the answer.
If the United States doesn't get on board with serious sustainable energy development now, it will fall behind, as it has with Internet and broadband technology, which will be detrimental to the nation, the planet, and its inhabitants.
Comments