The Biden administration has announced a plan to develop large-scale wind farms along nearly the entire coastline of the United States, the first long-term strategy from the government to produce electricity from offshore turbines.

Speaking at a wind power industry conference in Boston, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that her agency will begin to identify, demarcate and hope to eventually lease federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine and off the coasts of the Mid-Atlantic States, North Carolina and South Carolina, California and Oregon, to wind power developers by 2025.

The announcement came months after the Biden administration approved the nation’s first major commercial offshore wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and began reviewing a dozen other potential offshore wind projects along the East Coast.

On the West Coast, the administration has approved opening up two areas off the shores of Central and Northern California for commercial wind power development.

Taken together, the actions represent the most forceful push ever by federal government to promote offshore wind development.

The tallest and most powerful wind turbine in the world is to be erected at a national testing centre for the green energy source at Østerild in Thy, northwestern Jutland.

The prototype windmill, developed by Danish engineering company Vestas, will stand at a towering 280 metres.

That makes it taller than the pylons of the Great Belt Bridge (254 metres) and a little shorter than the Eiffel Tower (324 metres).

Energy production from the imposing Vestas structure will be 80-gigawatt hours per year, according to a statement released by the company on Friday.

The wind turbine is expected to be constructed in 2022.

Its height will constitute a world record, Peter Hjuler Jensen of DTU Wind Energy told DR Midt & Vest.

US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has announced plans for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to potentially hold up to seven new offshore lease sales by 2025.

The announcement was made during a speech at the American Clean Power’s Offshore WINDPOWER Conference & Exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts, and supports the Biden-Harris administration’s goal to deploy 30GW of offshore wind energy by 2030.

Wind leasing is planned for the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, Central Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as offshore the Carolinas, California, and Oregon.

As part of the development, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $13.5 million in funding to provide critical environmental and wildlife data to support offshore wind development.

GE Renewable Energy has been selected by wind developer Energie Eolienne du Maroc (EEM) to supply 40 onshore wind turbines for the 200MW Aftissat onshore wind farm extension in Morocco.

This marks the first order in Morocco for GE’s Cypress onshore wind platform.

The Cypress turbines will be operated at 5MW, with a rotor diameter of 158m and are expected to begin operating in 2023.

GE’s scope of work also includes a 20-year full-service contract.

The project is intended to support industrial companies under power purchase agreements, in line with Morocco’s goal to install 52% of renewable energy capacity by 2030.

Gilan Sabatier, Onshore Wind International Chief Commercial Officer, GE Renewable Energy, said: “Morocco has a great potential for wind energy and has been an early mover in the journey toward renewable energy integration, achieving great progress in its renewable energy targets. We are thrilled to be partnering with Nareva to implement our Cypress technology in Morocco, confirming our commitment to the country’s wind energy development.”

The Cypress two-piece blade design enables blades to be manufactured at even longer lengths, which, according to GE, improves logistics to drive costs down and offers more siting options in locations that were previously inaccessible.

South African utility Eskom is now the world’s most polluting company, according to a new study released by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Eskom, alone, now emits more sulfur dioxide than China, the United States (US), and the European Union (EU)’s power sectors. The utility is also producing more sulfur dioxide than the US and China combined, according to the study.

With China, the EU, and the US having various utilities using fossil fuels to generate power but being overtaken by a single utility in sulfur dioxide emissions, one would wonder the extent to which Eskom is polluting the environment.

These emissions contribute to high levels of ambient air pollution and to air pollution-related deaths in South Africa, responsible for approximately 2,200 deaths annually according to a study by air pollution expert, Mike Holland.

Most of these deaths are due to SO2 emissions, which form deadly PM2.5 particles once released into the air.

The emissions are coming from Eskom’s 15 coal-fired power plants at which the utility has failed to install desulphurisation equipment to help reduce emissions over the past years.

Installing the technology at the utility’s Medupi power plant alone would require R40 billion ($2.6 billion), according to Fin24.

Eskom generates 44GW of capacity from the 15 plants and emitted 1,600 thousand tonnes of sulfur dioxide in the 2020 – 2021 financial year, according to the utility’s integrated report.

However, whilst some of the leading sulfur dioxide emitters including the US, China, and the EU have implemented various measures to reduce emissions, Eskom (South Africa) has taken little or no action, according to the study.

“India as a country remains the largest polluter, and it is a tight race still between South Africa and Saudi Arabia,” according to CREA.

China, which has 20 times more coal-fired power plants than South Africa, has managed to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from 13 million tonnes in 2006 to 2 million tonnes in 2015. The EU, which has 231 coal plants (128GW) in 2019 reduced its sulfur dioxide to 560 kt, one-third of Eskom’s emissions.