No more Wind Farms for Dorset?

A Renewable Energy Conference at Christchurch Borough Council has been held to discuss Dorset's move to establishing more renewable energy.  The Government has set targets for a compulsory 15% production of renewable energy to be in place by 2020.

Wind farms have been a source of much argument, and many locals will be glad to see they are being superseded by other technologies more suitable to our local climate and topography.

Deep geothermal energy, tidal energy, wave power, biomass energy from forestry and waste wood, anaerobic digestion, energy from waste and solar power were all discussed.

The deep geothermal method was seen to be able to produce the largest amount of renewable energy.

Cllr Margaret Phipps who chaired the conference, said:

"The benefit of deep geothermal energy is that, once on-stream, it provides consistent renewable energy which is available 24 hours a day and on demand. It would provide a renewable energy solution nationally.

"In Dorset we have an area of 3,000km2 called the Wessex Basin which contains hot sedimentary aquifers below ground with an average temperature of 80°C capable of producing a large amount of recoverable thermal energy (33,000MWth).

The conference report concluded that, using today's technology alone, deep geothermal resources could provide 20 per cent of the UK's annual average electricity generation capacity requirement and the equivalent of the total annual heat consumption in the UK.

The conclusions from the conference have been sent to the Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson MP as well as to all Dorset MPs who have been asked to make representation to the government for the wind farm subsidy to be diverted to geothermal energy.

Photo courtesy of dymtrok's Flickr photostream