#HTE

Today’s Earth Week post focuses on wind energy, one of the most promising technologies to curb carbon emissions and address global warming in the coming decades. Approximately 314,000 wind turbines currently provide just 3.7% of global electricity, leaving ample opportunity for growth of both offshore and onshore wind farms. Wind farms use less than 1 percent of the land they occupy, allowing for greater land conservation and mixed-use like farming, while power generation takes place. Furthermore, when compared to fossil-fuel powered energy, wind produces significantly less emissions – coal’s carbon footprint is almost 90 times larger, while natural gas is 40 times larger.

Here is a collection of wind farm related Overviews from our collection:
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With the incoming tide, streaks of sediment form around the turbines of the Donghai Bridge Wind Farm in Shanghai, China. This facility was the first commercial offshore wind farm in China and has the capacity to power 200,000 homes.

The Bayannur Wulanyiligeng Wind Farm in Inner Mongolia, China, consists of more than 200 wind turbines and can generate nearly 850,000 megawatt hours of power per year at full operation. This wind farm has the capacity to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 760,000 tonnes annually.

Middelgrunden is a wind farm located 2.2 miles (3.5 km) offshore Copenhagen, Denmark in the Øresund Strait. The farm’s 20 turbines provide approximately 4% of the power for Copenhagen.

Blades for wind turbines are grouped together at a manufacturing facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. Individual blades are transported from this facility to wind farms on top of trucks and then assembled on-site. For a sense of scale, the longest blades here are 350 feet (107 meters) long, or 1.3 times the length of a New York City block.
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Source imagery: Maxar / Nearmap