It might not look like it, but this is the biggest construction project in the history of Denmark.
Instead of a new city district, airport or high-speed rail line,
the Danes are investing a whopping USD $34BN into a new kind of energy
hub - one located on an artificial island way out in the North Sea.
It’s the world’s first ‘energy island’
and if it all goes to plan, it could help solve one of Europe’s biggest problems.
What you’re looking at is an energy island.
Think of it as an offshore power plant that gathers renewable electricity from hundreds
of nearby wind turbines, before distributing it to several nations via undersea cables.
Although the exact location is yet to be decided, Denmark’s pilot project
will be based about 80 kilometres west of Thorsminde on the country’s Jutland peninsula.
With a total area of at least 120,000 square metres - that’s almost 100
Olympic-sized swimming pools - the island will be capable of providing three million
European homes with green energy - and that’s just in the first phase.
All this wind power funnelling into the site will give it a capacity of around 3GW,
but this could potentially rise to over 10GW - enough for ten million households.
Over on the other side of the country, in the Baltic Sea, a second smaller island is
also in the works - although this one will be joined onto the physical island of Bornholm.
When both are up and running and at full flow, that figure
jumps to 12GW - equivalent to the entire current offshore wind capacity for the whole of Europe.
For the North Sea island, building it this far offshore puts it in the
ideal spot for serving several nations and because there’s so much space around it,
it can be easily expanded in the future.
Examples of how it could be developed further include a new harbour and heliport,
as well as facilities for storing energy on site and converting it for other purposes,
such as green fuels for shipping, aviation and heavy industries.
Although the scheme has been given the green light, we still don’t know for sure
what the finished island will look like and there are different concepts for it.
That’s because while the Danish government will have a majority stake in the project,
private companies are also being invited to become partners,
with a tendering process set to begin in 2022 and the winner announced in early 2023.
Many of the plans for the design and construction will come from these private firms, which is why
a lot of questions around exactly how it will be done remain unanswered for now.
The VindØ consortium is one of the groups expected to
make a bid for the construction and operation of the North Sea island.
Their ideas include adding thermal storage units, a data centre, accommodation and
recreation facilities for the site’s workers as well as an area for visitors and research.
These pictures show that it will probably be either made of watertight caissons placed on
the seabed and surrounded by seawalls, or built up with sand as an artificial island.
Preparations are already underway,
including mapping the seabed where the island and turbines will go.
This is so the soil quality can be analysed and damage to the environment limited.
Whatever form it eventually takes, the project will be a massive step forward
for the integration of Europe’s power grids, and many see it as
crucial to helping countries all over the continent transition away from fossil fuels.
The system is designed to be flexible too,
with the ability to collect and distribute power around the combined grid, depending on demand.
It’s also a necessary move for Denmark itself. Now the largest oil producer in the EU,
the country has announced it will stop extracting oil and gas from the North Sea entirely by 2050.
The EU as a whole also needs to increase its use of renewables, as the 27 member
states have now committed to becoming climate-neutral by 2050 - some even sooner.
This means any greenhouse gas emissions they’re still producing will need to be
offset by processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere,
so they’ll want to be emitting as little as possible.
To reach this goal, the EU Commission has set a target of 300GW of combined
offshore wind capacity by 2050 - around 25 times higher than it is at present.
While some countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium already have strong wind sectors,
and Denmark was the first to build an offshore farm nearly 30 years ago,
not all EU nations have the expertise, or the space, to go big with wind.
But if they could gain access to a larger network of energy islands in the future,
located in places more favourable for wind power, this could go a long way towards
helping more countries hit their targets, ultimately creating a climate-neutral Europe.
After that, who knows? If the project is a success, then surely others will follow
and just maybe, in the future, you might find energy islands like this
appearing off a coastline near you.
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