Offshore wind power development in Europe and its comparison with onshore counterpart

Wind power, as a renewable source of energy, produces no emissions and is an excellent alternative in environmental terms to conventional electricity production based on fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas. At present, the vast majority of wind power is generated from onshore wind farms. However,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Renewable & sustainable energy reviews 2011-02, Vol.15 (2), p.905-915
Main Authors: Bilgili, Mehmet, Yasar, Abdulkadir, Simsek, Erdogan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
coal
Economic data
Electric energy
Electricity
emissions
employment
Energy
Energy economics
Exact sciences and technology
Financing
General, economic and professional studies
Investment
Natural energy
natural gas
Offshore
Offshore drilling rigs
Offshore engineering
Offshore wind energy
oils
Onshore wind energy
Onshore wind energy Offshore wind energy Wind power Renewable energy Wind
pollution
Renewable energy
Wind
Wind energy
wind farms
Wind power
Wind power generation
wind turbines
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Summary:Wind power, as a renewable source of energy, produces no emissions and is an excellent alternative in environmental terms to conventional electricity production based on fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas. At present, the vast majority of wind power is generated from onshore wind farms. However, their growth is limited by the lack of inexpensive land near major population centers and the visual pollution caused by large wind turbines. Comparing with onshore wind power, offshore winds tend to flow at higher speeds than onshore winds, thus it allows turbines to produce more electricity. Estimates predict a huge increase in wind energy development over the next 20 years. Much of this development will be offshore wind energy. This implies that great investment will be done in offshore wind farms over the next decades. For this reason, offshore wind farms promise to become an important source of energy in the near future. In this study, history, current status, investment cost, employment, industry and installation of offshore wind energy in Europe are investigated in detail, and also compared to its onshore counterpart.
ISSN:1364-0321
1879-0690
DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2010.11.006