Wind Power: The Future of Energy?

With concerns of a changing global climate, many countries around the world are looking for efficient energy sources designed to lower carbon emissions and combat global warming. One well-known energy project is harnessing the power of the wind with turbines to produce electricity. While many wind farms are built on land, offshore wind turbines are expected to grow rapidly as these climates are filled with constant driving winds. These offshore wind turbines hold great potential for the future of energy and new technology is changing the way wind farms operate.

Currently, turbines are placed in close proximity to the shoreline in rather shallow waters as they must be drilled into the seabed for stability. However this process may radically change as an energy project in Norway has developed a new type of turbine. The project is called Hywind and has successfully tested the first-ever floating wind turbine. Instead of being drilled into the seabed, these turbines can be placed in much deeper waters kept upright by a floating buoyant steel cylinder. Deep water wind turbines are larger and can create more energy as wind speeds are normally higher and wave conditions are smoother. Therefore, this project would require fewer turbines and would be more cost efficient than wind farms on land and coastlines. Since 2010, the Hywind turbine project has generated over 15,000 kilowatts of energy.

If this floating turbine project continues to thrive in deep sea climates, its effects on energy around the world can be quite impactful. With floating platforms, countries like Japan and the United States can construct wind farms in the deeper oceans surrounding the countries. Other countries around the Mediterranean Sea can use the deeper waters here as a home for floating turbines. If this wind energy project takes off and expands, it will also provide great profitability to the businesses and suppliers constructing the technology for the turbines. Overall, these floating wind turbines have great potential and will hopefully prove to be successful in the fight against climate change.