A major challenge facing the whole world and the UK is the impact of carbon usage in the economy and reliance of it in almost every aspect of our lives.
I read Biology at University and always had an appreciation of the issue, but like everyone else I am only now seeing the full scale of the issue. There are however hopeful signs, the media and population are now actively discussing the issue. Politicians have made a strong committment to become carbon neutral by 2050 at least in the UK, and slowly things are changing.
I went with my wife to look at a new car, and whilst Mercedes didn’t yet have an electric model of the version of the car we want, they are launching one in 2021 and will have a hyrid in 2020. So electric cars are coming and reasonably soon!
The greatest thing about the UK is not its weather, but it does have a very key benefit, the UK is one of the windest countries in the World and we have large territorial waters which are amogst the the closest to shore and the windest at the same time.
Wind farms are springing up in these offshore waters at a rapid rate and a very large amount of new build is planned and already in progress. Onshore wind has also expanded a lot.
Between onshore and offshore and nuclear we are already generating around 40% of our electricity requirements.
As electric car ownerhip increases then the amount of CO2 emmissions will rapidly reduce and as wind generation expands the % of energy generated from fossil fuels will drop also.
There is actually enough energy potential in our offshore estate to provide all of the electricity needs for the UK, the EU and Eastern Europe also. I can’t see this ever being allowed by the EU or countries like Russia, but the UK could in theory generate all of Europe’s (East and West) electricty from wind power and there would then be no need for any fossil fuel generation.
Here are a list of UK Wind Farm Operators and links to our sister site Reporting Accounts where you can find detailed information on each one
I will update this post as I find more companies, this whole area is really promising, it offers the World and the EU in particularly a way to achieve carbon neutrality, lots of employment opportunities for UK companies and as our own North Sea Oil is depleting anyway a solution so we are not dependant on Russia or the Middle East for our energy needs.
