The Danish Energy and Environment agency has completed an eight year study on two large offshore wind farms, Horns Rev and Nysted. The 144 page report details the impacts on the surrounding ecosystem including fish, birds, sea mammals, and seabed species. The final results were released at the Danish Monitoring Programme conference in Denmark.
The overwhelmingly postive finding confirms that both Horns Rev and Nysted farms will be given the go ahead to double in size in the coming years. The report was prepared by the Danish Energy Authority, Danish Forest and Nature Agency, Dong Energy and Vattenfall (owners of both wind farms), with commentary from the International Advisory Panel of Experts on Marine Ecology. All of whom gave the report a positive evaluation.
Read
The planned doubling in size of these wind farm along, with future planned creation of more farms, and other renewable energy projects should put Denmark on track to produce 50% (!!) of its energy needs from renewables by 2025. With almost all of it coming from large offshore wind farms.
This long term in-depth report could go a long way towards informing the debate around Cape Wind. The report found that for the most part, effects of the large wind farms were mild. They were certainly less severe than building a LNG terminal, burning coal or oil, or nuclear power. With the worlds energy consumption set to double in the next 25 years, that energy is going to have to come from somewhere. Cape Coders worried about the impediment to the view, or problems with the environment can look to this study to see the effects of a large off shore wind farm.
Below is the preface of the report, with the full report linked after.
The power source for the future:
Our future energy supply faces numerous challenges and has become subject to unstable international conditions. To meet these challenges off shore wind has a key role to play. Off shore wind power can contribute significantly to achieving the EU goals of a 21% share of renewable electricity by 2010, halting global warming and reducing our dependence on coal, oil and gas. We have come a long way since the 1980s, when most electricity production was based on coal and when the acidification of forests and lakes by acid rain was the predominant theme in the environmental debate. Today wind power provides 20% of Danish electricity consumption.Within a few years, the wind power industry has grown to become a significant industrial sector providing huge benefits for exports and employment. We are now talking about wind power generation plants rather than single turbines, and the Danish wind power industry is at the leading edge in an ever more competitive global market. In the energy strategy for 2025 the Government expects to see a significant increase in the use of renewable energy in the years to come. The market-based expansion of this sector will be brought about through incentive schemes and investment in physical infrastructure as well as research, development and demonstration. With higher oil prices and high CO2 allowance prices we expect that a significant proportion of the renewable energy expansion will be delivered by large, off shore wind farms.
At sea, wind resources are better and suitable sites are more readily available to enable these large projects to operate in harmony with the surrounding environment. We are therefore very pleased that the Danish environmental monitoring programme on large scale off shore wind power has received a positive evaluation by the International Advisory Panel of Experts on Marine Ecology. To sustain public acceptance and provide continued protection to vulnerable coastal and marine habitats, it is important to build upon the positive experience gained so far with the use of marine spatial planning instruments.
Off shore Wind farms impact on their natural surroundings and it is essential to ensure that conditions in unique marine areas are not detrimentally affected. Spatial planning when identifying potential locations for off shore wind farms taking into account grid connection routes and other areas of interests must ensure that future off shore wind farms are established in suitable areas in such a way that substantial adverse environmental impacts can be avoided or diminished.
One of the challenges we face is to assess the cumulative effects from multiple off shore wind farms to arrive at optimal site selection. Thus a committee on future off shore wind farms is currently updating the Danish action plan from 1997 to use the experience and learning gained to date in order to identify appropriate locations and at the same time to minimise visual disturbances and the effects on animal species such as marine birds and mammals. This publication describes the Danish experiences with off shore wind power and discusses the challenges of environmental issues that Denmark has had to address in relation to the two large-scale demonstration off shore wind farms Horns Rev and Nysted since 1999.
Read the rest of the report here. (pdf)
Note, however, that the main benefits of these giant facilities is to showcase the technology to drive exports of it. They are like Legoland.
They appear very pleased that the impacts compare favorable with those of other, “conventional,” sources, as if anybody doubted that. But they neglect to show tha other sources are any in way reduced by the presence of the wind facilities.
Rosa: You are wrong on both accounts. Denmark gets 20% of its power from renewable energy. It used to be a net importer of oil, (http://www.energybulletin.net/22213.html) now it is not.
I found this part to be interesting
“Denmark
2005 seems to be an exceptional year for the country, the first where consumption didn’t decline since 1996. The good student is projected as keeping up the good work and declining consumption 3%/year, in line with the trend observed in the 2000 – 2004 period. Such keeps Denmark as a marginal exporter through out 2020.”
It is ramping up its % of renewables to 50. That means that it will use 30% less fossil fuels. I really don’t see why you would think otherwise.
I fully support there wind industry. Its nice to see a country trying to export something that does the world good. America could be dominating the wind market. We have the educated workforce we have the industrial infrastructure, we have the raw materials, we even have the wind. We could be creating hundreds of thousands of American jobs. But we seem unable to kick the oil habit. Mores the pity to us.
Denmark replaced oil with natural gas. And their use of coal has not declined. Their export of electricity os mostly that from their wind turbines, because it is incompatible with their very efficient combined heat and power plants. It goes to Sweden and Norway and displaces hydro.
Well according to there own energy figures the usage of coal has declined 43% in the last ten years.
Also in the last ten years they have increased there usage of:
natural gas by 339%
wind energy by 479%
biomass by 814%
bio-gas by 196%
They are doing exactly what we should be doing, they are moving away from carbon heavy fuels like coal and oil, and moving toward renewables. All the while creating tons of jobs, and being ranked the happiest nation on earth this year.
So you are right they did replace much of there oil usage with natural gas, but there coal use has almost dropped in half. And who cares who is using the wind energy, if Norway and Sweden want to pay Denmark to make them clean energy, that’s great! Norway and Sweden get clean energy, and Denmark makes some money. Global warming doesn’t care what country you live in.
I would like to see some info regarding the purchasing of wind energy to displace hydro. Hydro energy is sooo cheap that I wonder why countries would pay MORE to import wind energy than use hydro. Do you have any sites that show this?
The trick here is that 1996 was a peak year for electricity generation and renewables were not largely used. Total electricity generation declined to a low in 2000 and has been rising again since,
I was wrong about natural gas replacing oil. In fact, coal replaced oil from the 1970s through the 1980s, but the 1990s saw it increasing again, along with natural gas. Since 2000, both have declined slightly, with coal making up more than the difference. Since 2000, the share of renewables in Denmark’s generation has actually declined.
Denmark generates more electricity than it uses, but as noted in the analysis by Hugh Sharman, “Why wind power works for Denmark” (Civil Engineering, May 2005) (available at National Wind Watch), almost all of the wind energy has to be exported — from the west to Norway and Sweden, where hydro can readily balance it, and from the east to Germany, where the much larger grid can more easily handle it. It is sold at a loss.
And while they are an electricity exporter, they are even more an importer. According to the Danish Energy Authority’s 2003 Energy Flows chart, They imported 242 PJ of oil for electricity generation (producing about 82 PJ) and 25 PJ of electricity itself. They exported 56 PJ of electricity, a number curiously close to the 63 PJ of electricity production from renewables (mostly from wind, presumably).
Hugh Sharman, “Why wind power works for Denmark†(Civil Engineering, May 2005)
Hugh Sharman and wind-watch.org seem like they may have an agenda….as do us all. Seems your facts say one thing and Denmarks say another. I will leave it up to readers to decide whom they wish to trust.
My facts, as Hugh Sharman’s, are in fact Denmark’s, too. My first paragraph is from information at the International Energy Agency, and the third paragraph is from the Danish Energy Authority.