Over the last three years British wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea has been one of the biggest success stories of renewable energy. The fact that the sea bed around UK and Netherlands is not deep for miles makes it possible for windfarms to set up bases away from the coast line. This in turn helps get stable wind pressure round the clock that helps generate power consistently which can be fed continuously to the grid.
Besides a wind turbine that would generate only 1.5 MW on land would produce 3 MW if placed 3 miles into the sea and over 5 MW if placed 30 miles away from the coast due to better and more consistent wind speeds. The Danes and the British firms have exploited this advantage of unique sea bed and have forged ahead in the clean energy race, as far as offshore wind farms are concerned. The wind turbine towers are grouted to the ocean bed which is less than 50 feet deep for thousands of miles around the British coast.
Now as per Guardian report dated 31st October the Oil and Gas Industry Association is planning to sue the North Sea wind farms over violation of sea space. Dozens of wind farms are being licenced in UK and some of them may encroach space leased out to offshore oil explorers previously. This has created a situation of confrontation between the two industries. Offshore Oil claims that the windfarms could impede movement of oil rigs or flight path of helicopters or laying of underground pipelines if allowed to permit in their allocated zones of operation.
Whereas Greenpeace has asked the UK Government to back clean energy suppliers, which is hardly likely, independent analysts opine that the oil and gas industry is shaken by the success of offshore wind firms and are planning to delay projects by long drawn legal action, as had been done in the US during the Bush regime.
The Cape Cod Project of 130 turbine wind farms in Massachussetts in the US was held up for 9 long years following court cases by influential Senators including Edward Kennedy before it was finally cleared by environmental regulators in the last week of April 2010.
The apparent reason of litigation was defacing the sea coasts. The US wind energy projects have been held up for years because they overlooked property of influential people, who considered the turbine towers as ugly. The power of litigation to slow down and devastate clean energy projects has been felt in several other areas too as tardy envioronmental clearance bogged down solar projects in the Mojave desert in California. British and other wind farms need to take lessons from such delays and stay clear of litigations. The fact that
mapping the seas and knowing of previously allocated lease locations and areas of individual offshore contractors is tricky, makes it all the more difficult for the wind farm operators.
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