The bottlenecks which could constrain emission cuts
The green revolution risks running short of minerals, money and places to build
AT 107 METRES, the three carbon-fibre blades of a Haliade-X marine wind turbine are longer than the wingspan of any airliner ever made. The generator which transforms their rotation—over 300km an hour at the tip—into power requires over 100 powerful magnets made of exotic metals and untold lengths of coiled-up copper. The blades, generator and associated gubbins, weighing around 900 tonnes all-in, have to be installed on a pylon so tall that the blade-tips reach almost as high above the waves as the pinnacle of the Transamerica Pyramid rises over the 600 block of San Francisco’s Montgomery Street.
In May, President Joe Biden’s administration announced the approval of Vineyard Wind, a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts which will require GE, an American industrial giant, to supply 60 of these airliner-skyscraper-stick-insect hybrids. With a planned capacity of 800 megawatts (MW) Vineyard Wind would on its own increase America’s offshore-wind capacity by a factor of roughly 25. But it will not be on its own. Mr Biden has set a target of 30,000MW (30 gigawatts, GW) of offshore wind by 2030, the equivalent of 37 such projects. Britain, China and Germany have ambitions on a similar scale. Bernstein, a research firm, reckons that the world’s offshore-wind capacity may reach 254GW by 2030, more than seven times today’s level.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Missing ingredients"
More from Briefing
Why America is vulnerable to a despot
Its democratic system is not as robust as it seems
The world’s economic order is breaking down
Critics will miss globalisation when it is gone
America’s fiscal outlook is disastrous, but forgotten
On the campaign trail, both main candidates largely ignore the problem