UK Offshore Wind: Moving up a Gear

Leading UK renewables trade association BWEA today launches a hard headed assessment of how the UK can deliver a quantum leap in offshore wind energy over the next 15 years.

The report "UK offshore wind: Moving up a Gear" analyses the supply chain and sets out how the industry expects to be able to deliver 20,000MW by 2020.

Maria McCaffery, BWEA Chief Executive said "This is a challenging target but it is deliverable by 2020. Today there are 1,100MW of installed offshore capacity worldwide but by 2020 there could be 20,000MW in the UK alone."

The Government's offshore announcement identifies a 20 year pipeline of new sites. With schemes currently in development there should be 6,300GW of wind power in UK waters by 2015.

The report predicts over £35bn worth of investment by 2020, and possibly as much as 50% of that could be directed to British companies. Long term stability should attract new entrants into the market, especially as companies seek to diversify out of oil and gas.

Moving up a Gear report author Bruce Valpy of BVG Associates said "There has been a significant change in attitude from utility developers from 'obligation' to 'opportunity'." He added, "With confidence in the market, the industry supply chain is ready to invest in order to be able to deliver a really significant contribution to the UK energy mix in the period 2015 to 2020."

McCaffery added "With five years of experience building offshore turbines the wind industry now has the capacity to turn the aspiration of large scale green energy into reality."