I blog about environmental and social justice issues because I am very concerned about the health of the interdependent web of life of which we are a part.

Melting Arctic ice.......beautiful and frightening!

Search This Blog

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Giant Windfarms / Giant Monies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/08/uk-offshore-windfarms-100bn
The UK government announced a £75bn programme today to build thousands of offshore wind turbines that will kickstart the next phase of renewable power generation in Britain.  The developments could create tens of thousands of new jobs, which will be crucial if the UK is to meet its targets for clean energy and carbon emission cuts.  Gordon Brown said: "This new round of licences provides a substantial new platform for investing in UK industrial capacity. The offshore wind industry is at the heart of the UK economy's shift to low carbon and could be worth £75bn and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020."
I presume these windfarms will be part of Europe's renewable energy supergrid that I posted about earlier. And how much is Canada investing in windfarms?   Our capacity right now is 3,3319 MW.  The UK has  2,764 turbines that generate 4,070 MW right now, and, according to the Guardian above, has plans to build thousands more.  The federal government had a program (announced January 2007)  to support the deployment of 4,000 MW of renewable energy by 2011. The program was not expanded or extended in the 2009 federal budget. (http://www.canwea.ca/farms/wind-farms_e.php )
The Prime Ministers of our respective countries have a vastly different outlook and ideology...

No comments:

Post a Comment