THE world’s first deep-water wind farm, which could provide an environmentally friendly solution to the depletion of British oil and gas reserves, is to be built in the North Sea.
Scottish and Southern Energy, the electricity supplier. and Talisman Energy, the oil and gas group, said yesterday that they would construct a £24 million model wind turbine in the Moray Firth.
The project, located 15 miles off the coast of Aberdeen, has received funding from the Department of Trade and Industry, the Scottish Executive and the European Commission. Scottish and Southern and Talisman will each contribute more than £7 million to the scheme, on which they have already spent £2 million.
Ministers hope that deep-water wind farms, which are constructed in 35m to 45m of water, could provide the solution to the UK’s need for a reliable source of renewable energy. The farms would be built alongside existing offshore oil and gas platforms, suggesting that they would be less likely to attract opposition from protesters, who dislike the visual impact of onshore wind farms.
There are also hopes that deep-water wind farms could provide a good use for the engineering skills and expertise that already exist in the offshore oil and gas industries, which no longer employ as many people as they did in the past, especially in the North East of Scotland.
Advertisement
Stephen Timms, the Energy Minister, said: “If the UK is to achieve its aspirations for the longer-term development of renewable energy then we may need to consider exploiting substantially more of our renewable resources than is currently envisaged.”
Construction will start on the first two turbines later this year and the first electricity generation is expected to begin in late 2006. The power will initially be used to provide electricity for the Beatrice oilfield, which currently produces 5,500 barrels a day of oil for Talisman’s Nigg oil terminal.
The project will be used to test technologies for deep-water wind farms, which cannot be seen from the shore. The results will help to determine if large-scale developments of this type are practical.
If the project proves to be a success, the owners hope to develop the idea commercially and estimate that it could provide more than one gigawatt of electricity — more than enough power to supply a city the size of Aberdeen.
Onshore wind farms are attracting increasing opposition from campaigners, who believe that they are a blot on the landscape. But offshore wind farms are much more expensive to build and investors have been reluctant to invest in them so far while the technology has yet to prove itself.