British Waterways has announced plans to generate renewable energy at canal and riverside locations across the UK.

The proposals are based on a target of 50 wind turbines built across the UK over the next five years that will generate 100 mega watts of renewable electricity, which could provide annual savings in excess of 100,000 tonnes of CO2, and generate enough power for 45,000 homes.

Robin Evans, chief executive, British Waterways, said: “This is a real example of a public organisation using its land in innovative ways to generate additional income and work towards a more sustainable future. We look after 2,200 miles of canals and rivers throughout the UK and, whilst always protecting their heritage, are proactively looking at how we can use this resource to make a contribution towards the fight against climate change.

“We believe that out waterside land could host around 100 megawatts of renewable energy capacity – some 219,000 mega watt hours. If we successfully develop this resource it would mean that the nation’s canal network would generate more than ten times more electricity than it consumes.”

Income that British Waterways generates from the turbines will be reinvested into maintaining the nation’s waterways.

Siemens Energy and consortium partner Prysmian Cables & Systems, are to connect the Thanet offshore wind farm to the British power grid as part of a contract worth 87 million euros.

Generating enough electricity to power over 167,000 homes, the wind farm with an installed capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) will be constructed in the North Sea, 11km off the coast of Kent, the wind farm will have its connection to the grid ready for operation in the summer of 2009.

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A wind plant in suburban Beijing is to generate 20 per cent of the power supplied to the city’s Olympic venues during this summer’s games.

The Guanting Wind Power Plant has 43 domestically developed wind power units at work, and has an installation capacity of 64,500kw.

The Wind Power Plant will not only help fulfil Beijing’s promise of a ‘green Olympics’, but it also symbolises the first-ever large-scale employment of wind power generation in the Chinese capital.

Since the first unit went into operation on January 20th, The Guanting Wind Power Plant has supplied 35 million kWh of ‘green power’ to Beijing. It is expected to supply 100 million kWh of electricity annually – enough to meet the daily demand of 100,000 households, and could cut the city’s yearly carbon dioxide emissions by 100,000 tonnes.

Billions of dollars are to be spent building new transmission lines as part of America’s largest wind power project, taking pollution-free energy from windy west Texas, to urban areas.

The plan, which was approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), will eventually transmit a total of 18.456 megawatts of wind power.

The PUV expects the lines to be in service within four to five years.

Siemens will test two 3.6-megawatt (MW) wind turbines with direct drive (DD) technology at a site in west Denmark. The company will subject the two DD wind turbines to comprehensive testing for a minimum of two years.

The purpose of this project is to assess whether direct drive technology is competitive with geared machines for large turbines. Beside testing DD technology, Siemens will continue product development of turbines with gearboxes, and new turbines featuring geared technology will be released in the upcoming years.

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In collaboration with the Norwegian company StatoilHydro, Siemens is developing the world’s first floating wind turbine.

In a departure from the method commonly used so far, instead of securing the windmill to the sea floor with a gigantic pylon, the power plant is to be stabilized by a special flotation buoy equipped with an anchor.

The innovation makes it possible for the first time to have wind parks on the high seas, in addition to ensuring more efficient exploitation of the wind power and not endangering coastal fauna. Plans call for a prototype to be put into operation off the coast of Norway in 2009.