Camille Fine, USA TODAY
Mon, November 14, 2022
A turbine at Hywind Tampen, a facility described as the world's largest floating wind farm, produced its first power over the weekend, Norwegian energy firm Equinor announced in a statement Monday.
While the alternative energy source is more emissions-friendly than others, it's currently being used to power the production of more traditional, higher-emission energy sources: oil and gas.
The “unique” wind farm – installed on floating concrete structures with a joint mooring system about86 miles off the coast of Norway – is the first of its kind to power oil and gas installations, Geir Tungesvik, Equinor’s executive vice president for projects, drilling and procurement, said.
The first power from Hywind Tampen’s wind turbine was sent to the Gullfaks oil and gas field and is expected to help power around 35% of the Gullfaks and Snorre fields’ electricity demands in the North Sea. In 2023, Equinor says it will have 11 turbines up and running with a system capacity of 88 megawatts to help power the production of fossil fuels.
Fully assembled wind turbines undergoing tests and adjustments before being towed out to the site of the Hywind Tampen wind farm, about 85 miles off the Norwegian coast.
Norway's government has previously said it wants to cut emissions while growing the nation's oil and gas industry.
"The Norwegian petroleum industry will be developed, not dismantled," a coalition of the country's Labour Party and Centre Party said in a joint policy document in 2021, per Reuters.
The company says its power will help with Norway’s energy transition and the energy security of Europe. The oil and gas sector is the country's largest one based on "value added, revenues, investments and export value," according to a report from the International Energy Agency.
“This will cut CO2 emissions from the fields by about 220,462 tons per year,” the company added.
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Since Equinor began operations at “the world’s first floating wind farm” in 2017, other nations are sprinting ahead with the technology, and a number of similar major projects are underway in the United Kingdom, Korea and China. Last year China installed 17 gigawatts of new offshore wind power, 80% of the global total, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
A wind turbine tower being assembled at Gulen, Norway, for the Hywind Tampen floating wind farm. When completed, the tower will be just over 325 feet high, and extend a full 300 feet underwater.
Countries like Japan, Australia, Scotland and the United States are eyeing projects as the technology has become more widely understood as a critical part of the global renewable energy mix.
The Biden-Harris Administration announced earlier this year that it was targeting 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind capacity by the year 2035 to bring floating offshore wind technology "off the coasts of California and Oregon, in the Gulf of Maine, and beyond" and provide "enough clean energy to power over five million American homes."
Contributing: Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
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