While low flow fixtures, rainfall collection, and solar panels help to conserve water and energy, the desalination plant and wind farm that were part of the original plan are the kinds of large-scale facilities that would make this community truly stand out as a worldwide front-runner in sustainability.

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It will increase the amount of energy generated from offshore wind in the UK by one third to 1, 314MW. Opened in September, the Thanet wind-farm was built by the Swedish Vattenfall energy company, and increases the number of large-scale offshore British turbines to 436, to be compared with 2, 640 based on land.

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