UK Wants Huge Expansion In Offshore Wind Power

OriginalArlen writes "The UK government has announced an ambitious plan to expand the existing offshore wind turbine farms, which are already extensive, to an estimated 7,000 units — two per mile of coastline — enough to generate 20% of the UK's power needs by 2020. The newly green-friendly Conservative opposition party is also backing the scheme. Wonder what they'll make of it in Oregon..."

Re:Migor does LAUGH

[renegadesx]

It's not wind... wind is just a theory
Say hello to 'Intelligent Blowing'

Oh great

[Tablizer]

Now they offshore our IT jobs to the fricken wind!

Re:Brits are...

[JK_the_Slacker]

The British are cigarettes? Seriously, old boy, I'm from MISSOURI [wikipedia.org] , and I know that slang means different things across the pond. If you don't catch up with the times, people are going to think you're one of those extremely unintelligent trolls. Oh, the shaminess of it all.

This has to have some long term effect...

[tjstork]

Let me get this straight. In order to save the climate, we're going to switch from CO2 producing internal combustion engines to something that directly sucks the energy right out of the sky. Has anyone even bothered to computer model the atmosphere when you start extracting gigawatts and then terrawatts from it? If you stop to realize that in western nations, people actually consume more energy than the solar flux of their entire country (which is why you don't see solar powered cars), then, the thought of getting all of our energy from wind power seems to create a gaping energy deficit in the very climate itself. When the dust all settles, we'll probably be in some sort of windmill induced ice age, or, there will be no more rain.

Re:This has to have some long term effect...

[ZombieRoboNinja]

What's the difference between the wind hitting a windmill and the wind hitting a building?

Mmm breezy

[OzRoy]

At least the windmills will keep the beaches cool in summer...

Re:Mmm breezy

[Faluzeer]

"At least the windmills will keep the beaches cool in summer..." In the UK we do not need help to keep our beaches cool in summer...

Re:Mmm breezy

[DirePickle]

Windmills do not work that way!

Re:Electricity export from France

[Dr. Cody]

Actually the power-plants-blow-up-in-50-years feature in SimCity 2000 stems from a feasibility study into the possibility of letting Italians run their own power plants.

If it does

[Chuck Chunder]

then the upside is that there will be plenty of bird-slurry food to help fish populations increase.

Isn't this good for bird evolution?

[MOBE2001]

I mean, it kills the dumb birds, hopefully before they reproduce. Eventually, you get a new species of high IQ birds who instinctly know that it's not a good thing to fly into a rotating wind turbine. ahahaha...

European hell...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're next door to Italy, of course you're going to be a net exporter! Who are they going to rely on to generate their power? Themselves

In European hell all the cooks are British, the cops are German, the engineers are French the lovers are Swiss and the whole thing is administrated by the Italians.

Re:European hell...

[Tim Browse]

In European hell all the cooks are British

Sounds pukka!