Blown away by hot air

PARIS — By the time this piece comes out, I would already be back in Manila. From Pamplona, Spain, we rode on a chartered bus tour that took us almost 12 hours to get to Paris. We did not feel the long hours on the road as the wide-bodied bus had comfortable seats and video to watch movies on DVD. It felt almost like riding on an airplane.

Travelling from one European country to another on a bus was a good experience. Of course, we had to break the long road trip at least every two or three hours, for lunch break and call of nature. The gasoline stations provide very clean restrooms, free of charge. It has also food stores for quick snacks and ready-to-eat meals and souvenir stuff for road travellers like us.

It was worth the trip aside from the wonderful sights we passed along the way. But the whole trip was not that tiresome considering the very smooth and efficient road network that inter-connect the highways of the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). The seamless transition of infrastructure of roads and bridges is something that the Philippines sorely lacks.

What especially caught my attention on our way here were several stretches of wind farms that dotted the plains along the highways to Paris. Unlike the windmills we saw in Pamplona that were all perched on hilltops, the French wind farms are on ground level. From what we observed, the windmills are not moving as fast as those we saw in Pamplona.

Windmills on flat terrain have smoother winds, top officials of Centre Nacional de Energias Renovables (CENER) of Spain explained to us in a media briefing last week. Windmills installed on hilltops and mountains have to be structurally bigger and the wind turbines stronger to absorb more turbulent winds on high ground. Thus, they can produce more electricity.

The Spanish wind energy sector currently has over 500 companies, with approximately 150 wind turbine production plants and their machinery across Spain. CENER scientific director Fernando Sanchez told us Spain produces 22-GW from wind power alone with over 12,000 windmills across the Spanish regions.

This February, a record 21.7 percent of Spain’s electricity came from wind power. The 4,890-GW hours of electricity generated from wind made it their country’s third-largest source of energy in a month, after coal and nuclear power plants, according to Red Eléctrica de España (REE).

Although Spain invested — in the form of feed-in tariffs — in solar power development, Europe has been experiencing severe winters, where wind power can thrive. By using wind turbines instead of fossil fuels to supply electricity, Spanish electricity prices fell to euro 51/megawatt hour (MWh) during the first two weeks of February while in neighboring France electricity cost euro 105/MWh.

According to Spanish wind energy company Gamesa, the Spain’s wind sector provides also over 30,000 jobs and prevents Spain from importing over 2 billion euros’ worth of fossil fuels. In all, that means Spain’s wind sector provides a return of three euros for every euro invested, according to Gamesa.

But it is France that has the third largest wind resource in Europe after Germany and the United Kingdom. From Google search, I found out Électricité de France is the main French electricity generator and supplier of windmills in France. in the year 2010, the French electricity firm sought to further increase its capacity to 10 gigawatt (GW) coming from their wind power.

This was in line with the French government plan to produce 21 percent of its electricity consumption from renewable energy in 2010. This is also in conformity with the EU goal of self-sufficiency in renewable energy to gradually reduce dependence on the conventional sources of energy like fossil fuel coming from crude oil, coal, and nuclear reactors.

France reportedly has been looking to expand its renewable energy portfolio, even toying with the idea of abandoning its notable nuclear program. In 2010, France met about 74 percent of its power needs from nuclear energy. While ditching all nuclear generation remains unlikely for France’s future, more wind turbines could be on the horizon. The country’s terrestrial turbines, Reuters reports, represent just 2 percent of its power output.

Like France, the Spanish government also plans to reduce its electricity dependence on nuclear power plants. Spain currently has nine nuclear power plants operating in various parts of the country. This was triggered by the radiation fallout incident of the Fukushima nuclear reactor after it was damaged by the twin disasters of a magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit Japan one after the other on March 11, 2011.

Safer and more environment-friendly sources of electricity have become a must, even a necessity.

As crude oil prices soar and the burning of fossil fuels cause more greenhouse effect due to CO2 (or carbon dioxide) emissions, the Philippines and other countries worldwide look for successful models of renewable energy. This we did during our working trips to Spain and France.

Lately, both France and Spain have started dipping into the Atlantic and English Channels for some of its wind energy needs and joining a few of its EU neighbors in the offshore wind business. Across Europe, offshore wind farms have so far built up a total capacity of almost 3,000 MW, according to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). By 2020, France reportedly hopes to add 6,000 MW to it.

We already have such offshore wind farm In the Philippines, specifically located in Bangui Bay in Ilocos Norte. The wind farm, however, produces only as much as 33 MW of electricity. It is a project put up a decade ago by then Ilocos Norte Governor and now Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

The Lopez-owned companies led by First Gen and the Energy Development Corp. (EDC) are also trailblazing the field of wind energy in the Philippines. The EDC — which operates the second largest geothermal plant in the world next to US — has laid out plans to put up this year a 86-MW wind farm in the mountains of Burgos, also in Ilocos Norte. Hopefully, this project will not be blown away by hot air.