Sharjah24 – AFP: The Mediterranean's first offshore wind farm is rising from the shallows off Italy, its turbines a symbol of hope for a Europe suffering an energy crisis exacerbated by war.
The park will stretch out from the port in Taranto, a city in the south blighted by a noxious steel plant and unemployment, but which now finds itself centre stage in the country's race to scale up green power.
"This is a big chance to change hearts and minds on renewables," said Fabio Matacchiera, an activist in Taranto, where child tumours are well above the average but poor locals cling to jobs in dirty energy.
Italy is one of Europe's biggest guzzlers of gas, which currently represents 42 percent of its energy consumption. It imports 95 percent of the gas it uses, 45 percent of which comes from Russia.
Offshore is more complicated: average water depths in the Mediterranean are much deeper than in areas such as the North Sea, making bottom-fixed installations difficult and costly.
The Mediterranean is also one of the world's busiest waterways, as well as the sea in Europe most prone to severe climate change.
But the invention of floating turbines has increased its potential.
France recently held the world's first auction for a commercial-sized floating offshore wind farm, and other Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Spain are also planning auctions for large-scale projects, according to the WindEurope association.
Once complete, the Beleolico farm off Taranto's sandy beach in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy's boot-shaped peninsula, will have 10 bottom-fixed, red and white-bladed turbines.
Together they will be capable of powering 21,000 homes.
Renexia, the company behind it, says it also has plans for a vast floating wind farm with 190 turbines off the island of Sicily, which would produce energy for 3.4 million families and create hundreds of jobs.
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