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| NEWS |
| 11-01-2006 |
ALL NEWS |
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UK government selects best green power projects for 2005 |
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LONDON, England: Three windfarms and three PV-clad buildings in the UK have been selected among the ten best green power projects of 2005. |
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“This has been an excellent year for renewable energy,” says energy minister Malcolm Wicks. “The projects highlighted have certainly made their contribution to reducing carbon emissions and increasing the megawatt capacity that comes from green sources, while helping people understand what renewable energy is and where it comes from.”
“We are aiming for 10% of the UK's electricity to be supplied from renewable energy by 2010, and it is essential that we make considerable year on year progress if we want to hit that target,” he adds.
The Department of Trade & Industry selected ten projects that began generating green power in 2005. The schemes were chosen because they are “exciting and innovative projects” that have helped to reduce GHG emissions and raise awareness of renewables, while contributing to the government's 2010 target.
The projects include the 90 MW offshore Kentish Flats windfarm in the Thames Estuary, which cost £105 million and is the third offshore windfarm to be built in British waters. The project has 30 turbines and generate electricity for 3,500 homes.
The other windfarms selected are the 143 MW Black Law onshore facility in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, where 62 turbines will generate green power for 70,000 homes in one of the largest windfarms to have been approved in Britain, and the 58 MW onshore windfarm at Cefn Croes, near Aberystwyth, Wales, where 39 turbines were the most powerful windfarm in Britain when it opened in June. The facility can supply electricity to 42,000 homes and will displace the emission of 4 Mt of CO2 emissions over its 25-year lifetime.
The BIPV sites selected include the CIS Building in Manchester, which was built in 1962 as the headquarters for the Co-operative insurance company and currently is being refurbished to install solar panels on the south, east and west facades, Partly funded by DTI's solar grant program, it will be the largest use of solar panels in Britain when it is completed this month.
The other BIPV selections are the Science Museum in London, where solar energy has been incorporated into the roof of the East Hall that houses an internationally significant collection of early steam engines, and the Eden Centre in St Austell, Cornwall, where solar panels on a new education centre are promoting renewable energies.
The £70,000 marine wave buoy, north Cornwall, was launched into the Atlantic Ocean in February by the Renewable Energy Agency for the South West, and will record wave activity and measure wave power to facilitate installation of one of the world's first wavefarms, which could be operational within three years. The buoy is sited in an area under investigation as a possible location for the Wave Hub, an offshore electrical socket that would be connected to the national grid by an underwater cable.
Two microgeneration facilities were selected, including the Spen Valley Sports Centre near Leeds in West Yorkshire and involves a 15 kW wind turbine, and the six wind turbines at the Nissan Motor Plant in Sunderland which will generate 5% of the annual energy requirement of the 750-acre site while reducing carbon emissions by 10,000 tonnes a year.
The tenth selection was the Balcas biomass facility in Enniskillan, Northern Ireland, which includes a combined heat & power plant and an operation that produces wood pellet bio fuel. It is the first biomass facility in the world to produce a renewable heating fuel using energy created by burning sawdust and wood chips.
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