Onshore wind energy in the United Kingdom, the unexploited resource

Peter Stokes

Global warming is now generally accepted as being caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. As such the reduction of these emissions has been high on the political agenda for many governments. In the UK up to a third of energy used comes from electricity generation and so a major switch of large scale energy generation is required, from burning fossil fuels to generation by renewable sources. Onshore wind energy is one of the most viable of the UK’s renewable energy sources, but its uptake so far has been mostly limited, especially compared to some other European countries.

This project plans to conduct an examination and discussion of different hypothetical scenarios for the United Kingdom’s onshore wind energy policy.

This project aims to challenge the current renewable energy policy in the United Kingdom with regards to onshore wind energy, by proposing and examining a variety of what if scenarios and comparing these to the nation’s current onshore wind energy strategy. The project will make use of geographic information science (GIS) technology to map energy potential of the landscape, which can in turn be examined for different hypothetical scenarios.

This project creates a model for predicting annual energy output of a turbine at any given point, requiring data on average annual wind speed, elevation and land cover type. This model is used to map wind energy potential in the UK, which can then be examined in detail through the use of hypothetical policy scenarios and compared to current renewable energy policy and electricity use.

The project finds that the total onshore wind energy potential of Scotland, England and Wales, excluding urban areas and areas over water, is 3,417.57TWh per year, which is 106% of the total electricity generation of the 27 EU countries in 2009.

The Vestas V90

Power output from turbines in Great Britain.

Examples of the scenarios include; a wind farm covering Orkney and Shetland. In this scenario the wind farm could produce 59,165GWh per year, which is over three times the current generation of all of the UK’s current onshore and offshore wind farms.

Areas within a 2Km radius of all large UK power stations. This came to 5,059GWh per year, equivalent to 67.8% of the electricity generated from all current UK offshore wind farms

This paper argues that the UK has a huge resource of onshore wind energy and models the UK’s onshore wind energy resource against current wind turbine technology to map this potential. This project argues that onshore wind energy is being held back by current policy and local opposition, but if these obstacles can be overcome, then the UK can take advantage of this massive abundant resource.

References

Bassi, S., Bowen, A. & Fankhauser, S., 2012. The case for and against onshore wind energy in the UK. [Online] Available at: http://www.cccep.ac.uk/Publications/Policy/docs/PB-onshore-wind-energy-in-the-UK.pdf [Accessed 18 July 2014].

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