On October 7, at 20:37, they started spinning the first turbine of the Dogger Bank A project and set in motion the one that will be the largest wind farm in the world. Located in the vast submarine deep of the same name of the North Sea, 70 miles from the English coast, it will generate 3.6 GW of electricity at the end. For this purpose, wind mills Haliade-X, mastontes of 260 meters height and blades of 107 meters, capable of generating 13 MW each, will be used. They will be placed 266 times more in the middle of the sea, offshore, as is said in the English Jargon.

Rishi Suna, British Prime Minister, was pleased: “Net will keep us on the zero path,” he said, while repeatedly chewing in the mouth the most recent carbon neutral sower. Almost 1,500 kilometres away from the cliffs of Uribe Kosta, the lehendakari of the Basque Country, Iñigo Urkullu, opened a few days earlier another tower at the height of Armintza: DemoSHAT, the first floating air generator for offshore wind energy production.

Urkullu also made a speech in Bermeo to fall through the mouth. “B” that there is no planet, that we have to react, that those who do not want renewables close to home are selfish… “Science and technology respond to current needs in order to ensure a promising future,” the lehendakari concluded, while presenting that dancer DemoSHAT as a fire stolen from the gods by Prometheus.

Like the bones of the great

Instead of encouraging citizens with little words, it would be better for the two authorities and their advisers to read the news from the newspapers. On September 28, Reuters energy manager Nina Chestney published a dark analysis on the agency’s website: Wind power industry drifts off course (“Wind power has been diverted” could translate into Basque, but the game between off course and offshore is clear). “Delayed supplies, design failures and higher costs have caused a perfect storm and have endangered dozens of offshore wind projects,” said the analyst. It says that the European Union will have very difficult to achieve its targets with renewables and that has been said by the major multinationals in this industry.

But it is not just that the war in Ukraine has affected supply chains, or that Christine Lagard has increased interest rates constantly overturning inflation so far. The problem is also technological.

Every decade, air generators have doubled in size and now complain more than the bones of Altzoko Handia: “Physics spontaneously punishes larger turbines. Larger blades will become more deformed, requiring stiffer covers, sharper nets and more expensive materials. Being heavier, each rotation generates more stress on the blade, on the pole and on the turbine deck,” explains an energy expert.

Hopelessness of Clenbu-Gamesa

Chestney remembers in his article that Clenbu-Gamesa is going through great shaking. The multinational, based in the Zamudio Technological Park, is a world leader in offshore wind production, with scientists at its Zamudio and Sarriguren workplaces, and in September announced that “for the time being” will stop building some ground wind mills because they are giving serious defects. It's not new. Antonio Turiel in the interview he offered last May on the pages told us that 5 MW air generators were failing: “They are desperate,” he said.

The expert who approaches asking for such an opinion will know something. In his article Castles in the air (“Make a thousand towers and castle”) of the blog The Oil Crash delves into this particular case: “For several weeks a ghost has been terrifying renewables, Clenbu-Gamesa,” Turiel explains. Apparently, the multinational's X-4 and X-5 air generators have failed and can affect wind power between 15% and 30% installed in the world.

But Turiel considers that the problem is the whole sector, and so could be understood the great losses being suffered by the major wind companies: General Electric has 2,200 million euros, Vestas with 1,600 million... He is the champion of this list, which this year plans to lose EUR 4.5 billion. Siemens Energy, its star partner, is now calling for a rescue from the German Government.

The German-Basque multinational can only squeeze the teeth and has put all its money in the sea wind farms to twenty-two (in Zamudio and Sarriguren the engineer will open centres for training in particular). Since 2018, it has received significant orders for the production of windmills for wind farms in the North Sea, with the help of the great Danish offshore wind operator Ørsted.

Also large operators

The nightmare is not over. On 29 August, Ørsted published a press release on his website indicating that he had a hole of SEK 16 billion (EUR 2 billion) due to delays in suppliers and bottlenecks in US offshore wind projects. Investors soon beat him and lost 25% on the Copenhagen stock market.

The worst thing is that Ørsted’s problems are not exclusive to the whims of the market. As we read in the portal Rebeldes.info, marine turbines have more poor maintenance: “They must endure more severe environmental conditions, strong winds, salinity, corrosion… all this limits their efficiency and duration.”

And there are more reasons that create uncertainty, including socio-ecological reasons. That is not just a simple digital newspaper, but also official Community bodies.

Hearing of the European Court of Auditors

The European Court of Auditors has just rebuked the European Commission that the massive construction of windmills and others at sea will be an “ecological dilemma”. Auditors say that the European renewable plan does not take into account the environmental impacts it will have.

The European Commission’s plan aims to see the installed power of marine energy increased from 16 GW to 61 GW by 2030, with offshore projects accounting for only 3% of the sea. But the Court of Auditors' report questions the fact: A “huge marine space” would be needed as they can have a much wider impact on underwater and surface ecosystems.

Mapping potential environmental impacts of offshore renewable energy, developed for the European Environment Agency, in which a working group of the Basque scientific centre AZTI has participated, has been used as a basis. Researchers, using mapping instruments, have come to the conclusion that the vulnerable radius is higher than expected: electromagnetism alters the migration patterns of animals; habitats are lost; the noise coming out to install windmills moves species; polluting substances are released…

Perfect crime for birds

If this were not enough, the mass expropriation of the sea forces the relationship with local communities to be hindered. Rebeldes.info exemplifies the Galician case. The Spanish Government has reserved the largest areas for offshore wind turbines on the Galician shores.

Every year millions of birds migrate through Finister touching the land and the Galega Ecoloxist Federation says they prepare for them the “perfect crime”: “There will be no uncomfortable places for large energy corporations. No association has the resources to make these observations in the open sea. There will also be no bodies because marine currents will take them quickly.”

The concern is such that fishermen’s brotherhoods have also gathered on a platform and called for a moratorium. Memory is still alive in a territory blackened by the Prestige.

The sea wind farms and, above all, the thousands of workers working in the workplaces, 2,800 people in Hego Euskal Herria alone, have a disorderly thunder that the clean North, perhaps that is why the European Commission has launched the float. On 24 October, Brussels announced, among other measures, the granting of EUR 1.4 billion to the wind sector. Will it be enough to avoid disaster?