NCE Wind Energy
- Published: 08 April 2008 13:03
- Last Updated: 08 April 2008 13:03
8th July 2008
The Royal Society of Medicine, London
By 2020 15% of the UK's energy is targeted to come from renewables, currently 2% does. There needs to be a massive growth in this area. Wind power is the fatest growing renewable energy - creating 4.5% of the UK's electricity. This needs to be 35-50% by 2020 is we are to meet the Government's targets.
In December 2007 JohnHutton, Energy Minister, announced proposals to open up the British coast to wind farms that could provide up to 33GW (gigawatts) of offshore wind energy, compared to the 2.2GW currently produced by wind energy. We should see enormous development within this sector as 2020 approaches.
At this stage, despite this government thrust there still appears to be a minefield of hurdles that developers have to get over before implementing these schemes. Engineers have the technical knowledge however planning, financing and providing enough supplies to construct these wind farms are hindering this enormous natural power being harnessed.
New Civil Engineer's Wind Energy conference aims to tackle the 4 major obstacles to implementing wind farms: planning, financing, delivering supplies and connecting to the national grid. We aim to explore the latest research and development into emerging technologies essential for engineers looking to capitalise in this sector and to bring together representatives from local and central government, together with a representative from the engineering community to air all feeling on this controversial subject.
