Renewable Energy : Will the UK’s Windfarm Hype Become Reality?
The government in the UK promised to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by eighty percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. In recent weeks, however, the UK public opinion started to question the dedication of the government.
Wallstreetpit.com has recently published an article that claims the wind power projects owned by BP in the UK, Turkey, China and India will shut down and BP will refocus its energy on the US. This same article suggests that thirty percent of the UK’s energy supply will come from wind power. Readers are wondering why the government is letting BP move their wind power projects to the US when they claim to be focusing on green energy sources like windfarms.
According to an article by the Guardian, Great Britain is one of the best locations in the world to be home to wind technology development. The popularity of Great Britain is owed mostly to the long coastline and good wind conditions that the country is famous for.
This same article names a new partnership between two major wind technology companies, Iberdola Renewables and Vattenfall, which will be building a new wind farm in the UK. This wind farm will cost 780m pounds to build and have an expected output of 300MW. Is it the pulling out of BP that allows for this new joint venture to be built? Why is wind technology being left up to private enterprise if the government is supposed to be fully behind it?
Even more complaints are being voiced about the sum of money that will be needed to build the wind farms that will generate all of the green energy the UK’s government is so enamoured with. If thirty percent of the nation’s energy is going to be produced by wind farms, quite a few will need to be built to shoulder that burden. The Carbon Trust, an independent research group, has guessed that, in order to keep the government’s promise the process will need to get considerably faster and-at the same time-sixteen billion pounds will need to be removed from the project’s original budget. Redgreenandblue.com points out that although the UK targeted 2020 as the date by which this wind energy would be available, only twenty five percent of the wind farms will have been built by then.
UK residents understand that the future of energy production lies with renewable energy and not the existing power grid. Renewable energy is more cost effective and is better for the environment than the current system. Still, with so many roadblocks in the way, each one of us should be wondering just how serious the UK government’s commitment to renewable energy is. If it is truly committed why is the project slowing down and losing money? What is getting in the way of the 2020 goal?
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