Scotland's Orkney Islands, swept by gales and buffeted by Europe's fiercest tides and waves where the Atlantic meets the North Sea, now shelter a state-of-the-art test center for harnessing the power of the ocean.
The opening of the European Marine Energy Centre last week in Stromness in the Orkney archipelago off northern Scotland puts the islands on the map in the study of tapping renewable energy from the movement of waves and tides.
EMEC, a US$10.4 million investment, has so far generated but one customer, an Edinburgh-based company called Ocean Power Delivery. But it hopes for many more, especially from outside Britain.
Kinetic energy -- or movement -- from the motion of waves can be used to power turbines. Waves rising into a chamber force out air which spins a turbine turning a generator.
Other systems use the up-and-down motion of a wave to power a piston that moves up and down inside a cylinder, in turn moving a generator.
Ocean Power Delivery has developed a prototype called Pelamis, consisting of four vast floating tubes, each about 120-meters long, designed to convert Atlantic wave energy into electric power via a system of hydraulic pistons. The production target is 750 kilowatts an hour, and EMEC's job is to test it out.
EMEC's Stromness base, capable of handling up to seven megawatts an hour, hopes soon to attract numerous foreign customers moving into the area of marine energy and keen to test out prototypes in extreme conditions.
And Orkney has extreme conditions. Tides there regularly flow at three to six meters a second and pounding waves sometimes leap as high as 10 meters.
Orkney, together with the Shetland Isles further north and the western Scottish coast, offer an unrivalled source of renewable energy in Europe, estimated at 21.5 gigawatts, or enough to provide for nearly all of Scotland's five million people.
However only a fraction -- 1.3 gigawatts or less than 10 percent of all electrical energy produced in Scotland -- is likely to be harnessed by the year 2020, according to the Forum for Renewable Energy in Scotland (FREDS).
But the Scottish capital Edinburgh has meanwhile set a target of meeting 40 percent of its electricity needs by means of renewable energy by the year 2020 -- twice as ambitious as the 20 percent set for Britain as a whole.
However Scottish efforts have not gone unnoticed in London. This month Patricia Hewitt, secretary for trade and industry, announced that 50 million UK pounds would be earmarked for a marine energy development fund.
EMEC in Orkney hopes to draw on this source to cope with competition from Portugal.
Portuguese authorities are also hoping to attract researchers and enterprises, and are offering highly favorable prices of US$0.28 per kilowatt per hour for all electricity generated from Atlantic waves.
"Without government aid, there is an increased risk that the fragile British marine energy sector could be attracted by Portugal and probably to Portugal," FREDS said in its 2004 report, which preceded Hewitt's announcement.
To attract public investment, the Edinburgh city authorities have also pointed to the employment factor, noting that every megawatt generated by wave and tide could also generate seven to 10 new jobs.
That would be 7,000 jobs by 2020. And by that date, says the British government, Britain could be importing as much as three-quarters of its energy needs if something is not done about developing renewable energy.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS