Environmental group Greenpeace has unveiled a strategic blueprint that suggests an offshore transmission grid is needed to integrate offshore windfarms into the power system.
In a new report: Offshore Wind - Implementing a new Power House for Europe, Greenpeace outlines how offshore wind will supply around 10% of Europe's power needs by 2020. But, the report continues, integrating some 70 GW of offshore wind capacity into the existing grid is a critical obstacle to be overcome and will require an offshore power grid.
The report, written by Deutsche WindGuard, points out that wind power is the world's fastest growing energy technology and argues that the industry has developed far enough to unlock the vast offshore wind resources that exist around the globe. Furthermore, with significant quantities of coal-fired capacity set to be retired over the coming decades, wind is ideally positioned to replace it.
The report concludes that planned offshore projects for the North and Baltic seas and the North Atlantic should be built as soon as possible to develop more experience.
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