A man-made island surrounded by wind farms in the middle of the North Sea could help bring large-scale renewable energy to Europe by 2050.
Dutch energy company TenneT claims its plans for the North Sea Wind Power Hub has the potential to supply 70 to 100 million Europeans with renewable energy in just over 30 years.
The plan involves European Union member states ? and the soon-to-be ex-EU member UK ? collaborating to trade from off-shore wind farms connected to man-made islands that provide a more cost-effective platform for delivering renewable energy to the mainlands.

Called Power Link Islands, the man-made structures would provide a permanent infrastructure for maintaining off-shore wind farms. Modular elements could be added to accommodate storage facilities for wind turbine components, aircraft landing strips, residence for staff, and electricity convertors. Currently wind farm projects are limited by geography and technology. Wind farms close to shore cannot deliver the capacity required due to lower wind speeds and limited space, but farms further off-shore are costly to maintain.
More remote wind farms also require more expensive direct current (DC) cables as alternating current (AC) haemorrhages too much power over these longer distances.

An island would provide a secure base for technology that could take the power harvested by nearby surrounding wind farms via AC cables and either transform it into DC to transfer it back to mainland power grids, or convert it i...