The UK government (click here) 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 Crown Estate revealed the successful bidders for at least 25GW of windfarms across nine zones in the seas around the UK.
The nine winning bidders are: Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd, SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd, the Forewind Consortium equally owned by each of SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft, Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power, East Anglia Offshore Wind Ltd equally owned by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft, Eon Climate and Renewables UK, Eneco New Energy, RWE Npower Renewables and Centrica Renewable Energy and involving RES Group.
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....
Eight years later.
April 17, 2018
...The United Kingdom (click here) seems to have gotten this message loud and clear. In 2017, the UK powered itself for a full day without coal for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, and in the beginning of this year, it announced plans to phase out all coal-fired power plants by 2025.
The nation’s efforts aren’t just about cutting coal, but about replacing fossil fuels with smarter and cleaner forms of energy. Scotland in particular has grown into a global leader in wind energy, with ambitious plans to produce the equivalent of 100 percent of its gross annual electricity consumption through renewables by 2020.
In 2017, renewables accounted for almost one-third of all electricity generation in the entire UK, and there’s a very good reason for the concerted effort: The UK is feeling the impacts of the climate crisis and is taking action to stop it.
“We are seeing a trend towards warmer winters and hotter summers, sea levels around our coast are rising by around 3mm a year, and there is emerging evidence of changing rainfall patterns,” the UK government said in a 2017 report to Parliament.
The list doesn’t end there. From extreme heat and powerful storms to public health, the consequences of our warming world are becoming a daily reality.
Read on to see what the climate crisis looks like in the UK.
In 2003, the UK and its neighbors in mainland Europe experienced one of the most significant heat waves in recorded history. Tens of thousands died – more than 2,000 in the UK alone – during what turned out to be its hottest summer in more than 500 years across the western part of the continent.
During that time, Brogdale in Kent set an all-time record high temperature in the UK, after hitting a sweltering 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 10, 2003. (The high end of average August temperatures in this region of the UK tends to max out at around 22.8 degrees Celsius (about 73 degrees Fahrenheit).)...
