The U.K. wants to generate enough wind energy to power every home in the country by 2030. And a cluster of remote islands is central to that goal. We visited a wind farm on the Shetland Islands, Scotland, to find out more.
Scotland offers some of the windiest conditions in Europe, making the Shetland Islands, located in the northernmost region of the U.K., the best place to develop and harvest wind energy.
To that end, British power firm SSE has invested millions into what will be the country’s largest onshore wind farm when it is completed in 2024.
The Viking wind farm, with its 103 turbines, could power almost half a million homes.
Alistair Phillip-Davies, CEO of SSE, said that energy security is paramount.
“We don’t want to be importing oil and gas from far-flung places that we no longer want to deal with and when we no longer trust the regimes,” Phillips-Davies told CNBC.
However, a lack of capacity in the U.K.’s power grid could derail its ambitious goal of being carbon-free by 2030.
We visited the Viking wind farm that has been in the making for more than 15 years to find out more.