There are massive projects worldwide to accelerate clean energy development. There is now no question that we are in a mega transition from our dirty fossil fueled past to green, clean energy. It's still a rocky road with yet some pushback from the discredited fossil fuel industry but there is no turning back.
Take a look at what's going on in some of the most massive projects to date:
Bath is referring to Bath, England as this news is coming from English press.
Meanwhile, China—the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal—has taken a big renewable energy leap with the construction of its first commercial large scale solar power plant that will spread across 25 square kilometers in the Gobi desert in the Qinghai province.
Once complete, the 200 megawatt “Delingha”—developed by BrightSource Energy from California and the Shanghai Electric Group in China—will surpass California’s Desert Sunlight Solar Farm as the world’s largest and be able to meet the electricity needs of one million Chinese homes.
Pretty cool, yes?
Japan’s 7 megawatt Offshore Hydraulic Drive Turbine stands at 344 feet (about 40 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty) and features three 262 feet-long blades and a rotor diameter of 538 feet. Significantly, the structure is located about 12 miles off the coast of Fukushima, an area infamously wrecked in 2011 by a powerful earthquake and tsunami that caused a catastrophic meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The project is built and operated by the Fukushima Wind Offshore Consortium, which has already installed a 2 megawatt wind turbine in November 2013. The organization boasts that their structures can shoulder the brunt of extreme weather. (Inclement weather was certainly a problem during construction of the massive turbine, as engineers had to stall installation four times due to typhoons).
“These turbines and anchors are designed to withstand 65-foot waves,” Katsunobu Shimizu, one of the chief engineers, told NBC News. “Also, here we can get 32-foot-tall tsunamis. That’s why the chains are deliberately slackened,” in reference to the loose chains that connect the structure to the seabed and fortify it against large waves. The turbine is also fastened to the seabed by four 20-ton anchors, UPI reported.
Not convinced? France sets sight on first ever
floating wind farm:
What a floating offshore wind project could look like, courtesy of Swedish developer Hexicon
The French Government has launched a tender asking for companies to submit plans to build the world's first floating wind farm.
France’s environment agency ADEME is calling for projects between three to six turbines, with the capacity for at least five megawatts per turbine. The French Government has made €150m available, one third as investment subsidies, two thirds as a loan, according to a Reuters report.
ADEME has identified three sites in the Mediterranean and one site in the Bay of Biscay, where the technology would be trialled.
Portugal and Norway have both built single floating turbines, but it is thought the French project will be the first to test the technology at scale. Earlier this week, a 7MW floating turbine was installed in Japan, becoming the largest such turbine yet built.
The question now is: Have we started too late to slow or stop the worst effects of climate change?