By Paul Homewood
h/t AC Osborn
Another hopelessly over the top headline in the Mail:
Installing wind turbines at the world’s best offshore sites would provide more than enough clean energy to meet global electricity demands, a study has found.
Offshore wind farms could become a cornerstone of the world’s power supply, researchers at the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported.
The potential of the green energy source is being unlocked by new wind turbine technology and increasing reductions in setup and operating costs, they added.
Replacing fossil fuels with renewables will be crucial to meet the globally-agreed goal of limiting the average temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius this century.
Power generated from wind turbines at sea only accounts for 0.3 per cent of global electricity generation today, said the IEA in what it called ‘the most comprehensive’ study of offshore wind to date.
However, based on current and proposed policies, offshore wind capacity is set to increase 15-fold over the next two decades.
This will turning wind into a $1 trillion business, the IEA said.
In fact, the IEA report, which is here, says nothing of the sort. It merely states that it would be theoretically possible to build enough offshore wind turbines to supply all of the world’s power, but nothing about the practicalities of doing so.
They might just as well have said that nuclear power could do the same.
What the IEA do say, and which the Mail does mention further down, is that offshore wind capacity will increase 15-fold in the next two decades.
Given that it only accounts for 0.3% of global generation, this would increase its share to a still tiny 4.5%. And that assumes that total demand does not increase, which is highly unlikely.
Somehow I don’t see it saving the world!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 26, 2019 at 12:06PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
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