View from Inside October 2005
- Published: 03 October 2005 03 October 2005
Denmark: The Wind Power Hub of the World
The future is for renewables and innovative energy solutions. Even the CEO of Chevron now recognises it publicly in large ads in the Financial Times. Wind is showing the route away from the fossil fuel trap, and is fast becoming a major power player in today’s energy markets. Offshore wind is a central part of this future. The reward for going offshore is a greater and more constant wind resource and the potential for constructing wind power plants in sizes and with characteristics comparable to conventional power plants.By Bjarne Lundager Jensen, Managing Director, Danish Wind Industry Association
Dominique La Fontaine looks at the global energy challenge of our time and the potential role that Australia’s large untapped wind energy resource can play in the clean energy mix. In Australia, climate change is finally being acknowledged by Australian governments, businesses and communities as an issue that needs to be urgently addressed. Perhaps more significantly, the link is now being drawn between Australia’s unrelenting drought and our rising greenhouse gas emissions. Low-emission energy sources are being debated as the only way forward for Australia’s energy future.
The wind industry is currently looking at alternative configurations that could bring about a slow but significant change in direction. It would seem that wind farm developers and town planners alike are looking towards alternative and radical designs to fill the demand at either end of the size spectrum. A possible alternative design could be the vertical axis wind turbine.
As a clean and renewable energy, wind energy has great prospects for exploitation and utilisation, and the technology has been maturing. In recent years, the Chinese wind energy industry has developed rapidly. Wind energy technology and production capability in China have also made great progress. This year, the ‘Renewable Energy Law’ has been enacted, and it will help to promote the development of wind energy in China.
Wind power is the most developed of all renewable energy technologies in Spain. It is also the one that can and should contribute most towards reaching the national objective of covering 12% of primary energy consumption from renewables by 2011. At present the total wind energy capacity installed in Spain is 8,300MW, the second highest capacity worldwide, after Germany. The main reason for this success has been an appropriate regulatory framework, the availability of resources, and the industrial and technical capacity of the Spanish companies.
Wind energy is the most successful of contemporary energy solutions. However, new energy solutions depend on appropriate tariff schemes. They are even more crucial than research and mass production for the massive implementation of wind energy. Three countries with guaranteed prices, Germany, Spain and Denmark, represent over 75% of wind energy generation in Europe. When Denmark suspended its guaranteed price system in 2003, the market for new wind power instantly vanished. In contrast, Austria changed to guaranteed tariff schemes in 2003, and the highest European growth rate was immediately observed.