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offshore wind farm

The Blue Acceleration | Earth Wise

February 24, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Human pressures on world's oceans show no sign of slowing

The oil and gas sector is the largest ocean industry.  It’s responsible for about one third of the value of the ocean economy.  Sand and gravel, destined for the construction industry, are the most mined minerals in the ocean.  And during the past 50 years, approximately 16,000 desalination plants have popped up around the world to help supply people with an increasingly scarce commodity: freshwater. 

As a result of these and other human pressures, the world’s oceans have suffered a lot over time.  But according to a comprehensive new analysis on the state of the ocean, human pressure on the world’s oceans, driven by a combination of technological progress and declining land-based resources, sharply accelerated at the start of the 21st century.  Scientists have dubbed this dramatic increase, which shows no signs of slowing down, the “Blue Acceleration.”

A  research team from Stockholm University analyzed 50 years of data from aquaculture, bioprospecting, shipping, drilling, deep-sea mining, and more.  Their findings were recently published in the journal One Earth.

While claiming ocean resources and space is not new, lead author Jean-Baptiste Jouffray from the Stockholm Resilience Centre says “the extent, intensity, and diversity of today’s aspirations are unprecedented.”

The researchers also highlight how not all human impacts on the ocean are negative.  For example, offshore wind farm technology has reached commercial viability allowing the world to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

But how can the Blue Acceleration be slowed?  Since only a handful of multinational companies dominate sectors like the seafood industry, oil and gas exploitation, and bioprospecting, one idea is to have banks and other investors adopt more stringent sustainability criteria for making ocean investments. 

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Human pressure on world’s ocean shows no sign of slowing

Photo, posted October 29, 2008, courtesy of Silke Baron via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Largest Offshore Wind Farm

July 30, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The world’s largest offshore wind farm recently began operations in the North Sea, a notoriously gusty stretch of open water that has become home to multiple large wind farms.  The new Hornsea One wind farm is located 75 miles off the east coast of Yorkshire in the United Kingdom.

The first 50 turbines are now in operation and are generating electricity for up to 287,000 homes.  When the farm is completed sometime next year, it will have 174 turbines with a total capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, enough to power a million homes.  The farm will send electricity to the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Scandinavia.  The Hornsea One farm will have more than twice the capacity of the current largest offshore operation, which is also in the UK.

Because the farm is so far from shore, teams of workers will live at sea for two to four weeks at a time maintaining it.  Such operations are unprecedented and required new ways of operating to overcome the logistical and technical challenges of operating a massive power station far from land.

The UK has the largest offshore wind generating capacity in Europe, now more than 8.2 gigawatts and accounting for 44% of Europe’s offshore wind capacity.  All that capacity is one of the big reasons that the UK has been successfully weaning itself off of coal for increasingly long periods of time.

Meanwhile, the US continues to lag far behind in offshore wind with a grand total of 0.03 gigawatts of installed capacity.  That situation may be changing after the federal government auctioned off 3 major tracts of ocean late last year that potentially could generate over 4 gigawatts of power if fully developed.

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The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Just Came Online

Photo credit: Hornsea Project One.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

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