The offshore wind industry is poised to experience rapid growth over the next decade. To meet the demand Vestas has unveiled a new turbine designed specifically for harsh marine environments.

Many governments around the world, especially the United Kingdom, are interested in utilizing offshore wind as a (more…)

U.S. officials say they will spend as much as $50.5 million to promote the growth of offshore wind energy in a push to achieve 54 gigawatts of electricity from offshore turbines by 2030.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the new initiative will seek to reduce the costs of (more…)

Starting in 2006, the government of Norway created a target of reaching 30 Terra Watt hours of elevated annual production of energy efficiency and renewable energy by 2016. Currently, the power system in Norway is hydropower dominated. Over the last few years, due to the investment the Norwegian government has made to increase efforts in the development of (more…)

A late comer to the wind turbine manufacturing industry, Siemens AG entered the wind business six years ago when it purchased the veteran Danish wind turbine manufacturer Bonus Energy. Europe’s largest engineering firm, Siemens is also one of the world’s primary suppliers of transmission infrastructure equipment. In 2010, the company’s 3 and 3.6 MW wind (more…)

France will soon join other European countries like England, Scotland, and Denmark in generating electricity from offshore wind projects free from the environmental impacts associated with carbon or nuclear energy. This week French officials are announcing a plan to install six hundred wind turbines capable of producing 3,000 megawatts of energy. (more…)

We hear a great deal about partisan bickering in Washington, but according to a webinar I attended yesterday on power transmission, the governors of each state on the eastern seaboard of the US from Maine to Virginia are all in complete accord on the imperative to develop offshore wind. “There are a couple of extremely (more…)

Areva is a company that is best described a French based corporate industrial conglomerate with their hands in the mining trade, energy trade, and within the last several years, the renewable energy trade. The renewable energy side of Areva’s business began in 2006 when they announced the creation of the Areva Renewables Group. Since then, their (more…)

A Rhode Island company is planning to use a relatively new design for offshore wind platforms to build a large wind farm 18 to 27 miles off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm, which would use four-legged platforms to support large wind turbines, could be located in water up to 52 meters (170 feet) deep. That is more than (more…)

While the construction of wind farms has broad public support across the UK — more than 75 percent of people recently polled said they would be in favor of plans to build a wind farm close to where they live — only one-quarter of wind energy projects are winning public approval. (more…)

The U.S. could generate 20 percent of its electricity from wind energy by 2030 if it develops offshore wind farms in the coastal waters of 26 states, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). Developing the nation’s offshore wind potential would also create $200 billion in “new economic activity” and 43,000 jobs, according to the (more…)