<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/figure><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t\tSpain has been a pioneer in the development of wind energy. In April, 1984, it became the second European country after Greece to install a wind farm, located in Garriguella (Girona). This early rollout, together with favourable geographical and weather conditions, has made the Spanish wind power sector one of the strongest and most innovative in the world. Investment in R&D has reached 7.25%, much higher than the national average, and Spain is ranked sixth in the world and third in Europe for wind power patent applications.<\/p>\n
And global demand is growing every year: the urgent need to slow climate change, replacing fossil fuel energy sources with clean and renewable energy, and constantly improving wind turbine technology, has fuelled major global growth in the sector. By 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects that 28% of the world\u2019s energy demands will be met by renewable energy sources.<\/p>\n
Among these, wind power is number one and already satisfies 5% of the world\u2019s electricity demand. Currently, according to the World Wind Energy Council, global installed power exceeds half a million megawatts; in 2017 alone, it increased by 52,573 megawatts, the third largest increase since the record year of 2014. In Europe, wind power now supplies 12% of the continent\u2019s electricity and a third of this is produced in Spain<\/p>\n
Economic impact<\/h4>\n
According to data from the Spanish Wind Energy Association (AEE), Spain\u2019s principal wind power industry association, in 2018, the sector contributed 3.39 billion euros, or 0.31%, to Spain\u2019s GDP, between direct and indirect contribution, and employed 22,578 people. Consisting of more than two hundred companies present in over 35 countries, the Spanish wind power sector encompasses all of the links of the value chain: from equipment manufacture \u2013there are 207 manufacturing centres in 16 of the 17 autonomous communities\u2013 to installation, commissioning and maintenance. The sector\u2019s rapidly increasing exports, which in 2018 were worth 2.3 billion euros are particularly notable: Spain is the fourth largest exporter of wind turbines in the world, behind China, Denmark and Germany.<\/p>\n
Clean\u2026 but not harmless<\/span><\/h4>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nDespite being a \u2018clean\u2019 energy, wind power production is not without its environmental impacts. Indeed, installing a wind farm requires a favourable environmental impact statement from the authorities, which is not always obtained.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, the use of wind power reduces polluting emissions \u201325 million tonnes of CO2<\/sub> in 2018, according to the AEE\u2013 and reduces the cost of acquiring fossil fuels (1.5 billion euros, the cost of 9.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent).<\/p>\nOn the other hand though, wind farms can cause different kinds of environmental problems. The most significant are impact on landscape due to the characteristics of the facilities (machinery at altitude, high locations, large number of devices); acoustic issues (noise); disturbance of land; and especially, the death of birds and bats that fly into the wind turbine blades.<\/p>\n
Ecological organisations denounce these impacts while the industry proposes more powerful wind turbines \u2013which could mean smaller numbers\u2013 and even bladeless turbines, such as the one being developed by a small Spanish company located in \u00c1vila.<\/p>\n
<\/div><\/div>\n
The challenge of offshore wind farms<\/span><\/h4>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nThere are two kinds of wind farms depending on their location: onshore and offshore. The latter generate more energy thanks to stronger and more constant winds, but their installation costs are between 30 and 50% higher than onshore farms.<\/p>\n
At the moment, Spain only has one offshore facility operating in a prototype phase: a 5-megawatt wind turbine called Elisa located off of Grand Canary Island, which began producing electricity in April 2019. There is one major reason for this slow rate of development: the Spanish coastline is too rugged and its waters too deep; it has no continental shelf like other countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Despite this, Spanish companies are still leaders in offshore wind farm technology.<\/p>\n
<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spain\u2019s wind-power sector, ranked fifth in the world in terms of generation capacity and fourth in terms of wind turbine exports, is one of the strongest and most technologically advanced in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[598],"tags":[1910,1909,1908],"coauthors":[51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3881,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions\/3881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Despite being a \u2018clean\u2019 energy, wind power production is not without its environmental impacts. Indeed, installing a wind farm requires a favourable environmental impact statement from the authorities, which is not always obtained.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, the use of wind power reduces polluting emissions \u201325 million tonnes of CO2<\/sub> in 2018, according to the AEE\u2013 and reduces the cost of acquiring fossil fuels (1.5 billion euros, the cost of 9.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent).<\/p>\n On the other hand though, wind farms can cause different kinds of environmental problems. The most significant are impact on landscape due to the characteristics of the facilities (machinery at altitude, high locations, large number of devices); acoustic issues (noise); disturbance of land; and especially, the death of birds and bats that fly into the wind turbine blades.<\/p>\n Ecological organisations denounce these impacts while the industry proposes more powerful wind turbines \u2013which could mean smaller numbers\u2013 and even bladeless turbines, such as the one being developed by a small Spanish company located in \u00c1vila.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div>\n There are two kinds of wind farms depending on their location: onshore and offshore. The latter generate more energy thanks to stronger and more constant winds, but their installation costs are between 30 and 50% higher than onshore farms.<\/p>\n At the moment, Spain only has one offshore facility operating in a prototype phase: a 5-megawatt wind turbine called Elisa located off of Grand Canary Island, which began producing electricity in April 2019. There is one major reason for this slow rate of development: the Spanish coastline is too rugged and its waters too deep; it has no continental shelf like other countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Despite this, Spanish companies are still leaders in offshore wind farm technology.<\/p>\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spain\u2019s wind-power sector, ranked fifth in the world in terms of generation capacity and fourth in terms of wind turbine exports, is one of the strongest and most technologically advanced in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[598],"tags":[1910,1909,1908],"coauthors":[51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3881,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3880\/revisions\/3881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3880"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revistaitransporte.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The challenge of offshore wind farms<\/span><\/h4>\n\t\t\t