Sweden’s giant wooden wind turbine promises greener future | BBC News

Sweden’s giant wooden wind turbine promises greener future | BBC News

Wind turbines provide renewable energy but producing the steel they’re often made from isn’t such an environmentally friendly process well now a wind turbine made of wood has begun supplying electricity to the Swedish grid as Jonah fiser explains having brought us abber meatballs and flat pack furniture from Sweden comes another Innovation that

Just might change the way we generate electricity welcome through the world’s tallest wind turbine Tower made out of wood currently almost all of the world’s turbines are steel which is usually made by burning fossil fuels steel is great material right but steel is very heavy and with this material we can perform

The same task but with 30% less weight and with more than 100% less carbon emissions we’re the first journalists invited inside for a closer look wind power is already one of the cheapest and cleanest ways to generate electricity using wood could make it even Greener I’m now 105 M up at the

Very top of the tower these blades are like almost all wind turbines made out of fiberglass the generator that I’m standing on is primarily made of steel but the company who’s built the wooden Tower say that by making the tower out of wood it’s storing carbon dioxide it’s

Carbon negative and it’s that carbon dioxide that’s warming our planet but this isn’t only about being Greener to reach stronger and more consistent winds turbines need to get even taller and that means bigger and wider turbine Towers getting those massive pieces of Steel on site by Road

Is already a major headache and that’s where wooden Towers just might come in there’s a huge amount of potential in this that’s because the towers are modular at a factory in Gothenburg more than 100 thin sheets of wood are glued together to make the wall sections those

Modular pieces can then be more easily taken to the turbine site we do not bolt our Towers or screw them together we we glue them together right and wood and glue is a perfect combination so is it all just a bit of a gimmick well maybe not the project is

Being backed by vestus the world’s largest installer of wind power and they told us that using wood could end up solving some of the industry’s transport problems in a more environmentally sustainable way Jonah Fisher BBC News in Goth ber in Sweden

It’s made from the same wood as a Christmas tree and held together by glue. A company in Sweden has created the world’s tallest wind turbine made from timber.

It says this is the future of wind turbine design, promising bigger wind generators which are far greener.

Conventional wind turbines generate renewable energy but producing the huge quantities of steel they’re made from is not an environmentally friendly process.

The timber turbine tower in Sweden is far lighter than steel and takes a tiny fraction of the carbon emissions to produce, while the timber itself is a carbon store.

There could be other benefits to using wood for turbine towers. Its strength and resilience may allow the creation of bigger and taller turbines, generating more electricity.

Clive Myrie presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Jonah Fisher.

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