UK Reaches 10 GW Offshore Wind Capacity
Including all projects currently planned, under construction, or in operation, the UK now has over 10 GW of offshore wind.
This comes from RenewableUK, the country’s trade organization representing the wind industry, after announcements were made by Siemens and DONG Energy last week that bumped the country’s secured offshore wind capacity up over 10 GW.
Last week DONG Energy announced that it had consented to build the 660 MW Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm which, upon conclusion, will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world (at least for a little while). DONG Energy appointed MHI Vestas Offshore Wind and Siemens to provide turbines for the project, which is expected to be commissioned in 2018.
The news was quickly followed by another announcement from Siemens, which had received an order for 56 of its 6 MW wind turbines for the 336 MW Galloper Wind Farm, set to be developed off the southeast coast of England by its developers RWE, the UK Green Investment Bank, Macquarie Capital, and Siemens Financial Services.
“The UK is the number one destination for offshore wind investors,” said Dr Gordon Edge, RenewableUK’s Director of Policy for Economics and Regulation. “This week’s two major announcements of offshore wind projects achieving financial close, securing billions of pounds in investment, show that it remains an attractive place to do offshore business.”
Britain will quickly see its current 5 GW of operational offshore wind capacity double, at which point more than 7 million residents will be able to have their electricity needs met by offshore wind generated clean electricity.
“The Government’s advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change, is now recommending we install 1-2 gigawatts of offshore wind a year throughout the 2020s to meet out carbon reduction goals, so we could reach as much as 30GW by 2030,” continued Dr Edge. “The CCC says offshore wind is set to become cheaper than gas during the next decade, so it offers excellent value for money in terms of keeping bills down. We’re also generating jobs, with 13,000 people already working in the industry – that could increase to 44,000 in less than 10 years.”
“However, if we’re to continue to deliver ambitious offshore infrastructure projects throughout the 2020s, we need a clear plan from Government stating how much offshore wind capacity it wants over the next decade. We’ve had some encouraging signals so far, but we need details of how the financial framework is going to work for offshore wind to deliver at scale, as a key part of the Government’s industrial strategy.”
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
CleanTechnica Holiday Wish Book
Our Latest EVObsession Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
“planned” or “future” capactiy not “10 GW capacity”
current 5 GW of operational offshore wind capacity – from bottom of story
under construction(?) + planned(?) must therefore be 5GW.
Spot on, less hype, more solid facts.
Really? The headline could be faulted for over-reaching a bit, but the first sentence reads:
“Including all projects currently planned, under construction, or in operation, the UK now has over 10 GW of offshore wind.”
I hardly think the author can be faulted for lack of clarity, nor IMO would the story be rendered ‘unsharable.’
The headline is the misnomer, not the article, even if the headline had read ‘ UK on target to reach 10 GWs’ then no problem.
Also,the rosy job assertions are as usual misleading.
Yes, RE and EVs are on the march and coal is in serious decline but the ‘ it will be over by Christmas’ attitude of some in the renewable media is somewhat overdone.
Try pasting this article on some sites and await a serious shredding-:)
My comment was on the general trend of headlines here.
The key to building offshore wind is to have the best sites far away from your richest citizens.
All of the wind turbines are being installed off the northern UK coasts. Most of the ultra wealthy in the UK live around London in the southern part of the country.
The best wind sites in the United States have nothing but coast lines of million dollar mansions.
Millionaires / Billionaires own that land, they own Washington, and they don’t like to look at wind turbines. Fuck poor people.
#Citizen’s United
#SuperPACs
Quite simplistic but on the whole i agree 🙂
Navitus Bay is a case in point – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34188026
While Bournenmouth isn’t filled with the ‘super rich’ they still fit the stereotype.
Is building a wind farm in a poorer area ‘f*cking’ anyone? Those northern wind farms have brought industry back to some of western Europe’s most deprived communities (Hull is a good example).
Bringing a rapidly growing, labour intensive industry like offshore wind to poorer communities is an incredibly effective and relatively affordable stimulus measure.
Industry creates relatively well-paid, stable jobs. At least as importantly, businesses often partner with local schools, colleges and universities. Such partnerships boost the education budget and steer educational establishments towards modern, useful curricula. Over time, these partnerships grow into huge clusters that attract dozens of businesses in a specific industry.
So please, ‘f*ck the plebs’ and build as many wind turbines in their backyard as possible.
This is the irony of the windy red states. They cannot deny all the jobs and income fees generated from their local wind industry but the fossil fool in them just can’t accept it. The Great Plains are the perfect location to power all of America. Very dense Europe is lucky to have the shallow North Sea.
Loads of money encouraging stupidity out there, but locally produced energy is better for the local economy than remotely produced energy as long as it’s competitively priced, and the locals tend to catch on to that, so eventually the leaders follow.
Haven’t seen much of of this “bringing back industry” around here, and while being a serious supporter of all types of RE ( with the exception of biomass) I remain highly sceptical of material benefits brought to the hard hit former industrial areas of the UK.
This imposition of higher prices for electricity due to subsidies on our bills, while most of the skilled jobs and profits go abroad is going to present the denier community with a major open goal.
The only reason I can imagine we haven’t heard much of an outcry yet is that the ‘city’ is feasting on lots of rich pickings with the various billion pounds of transactions being created by the move to RE.
I have seen the cost break down for German electric, and RE support is a small portion. In fact wholesale rate and rates to industry are down.
I haven’t seen the break down for UK electric. Do you have data, and please don’t include nuclear support as RE support.
Here are two:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/why-the-government-adds-green-levies-to-household-energy-bills
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24646527
Not sure if these have changed slightly due to Gideon’s obsessiveness in ****ing up the UK with his “we must cut the public sector until it fits in a matchbox” approach.
Depends on whose “data” you believe, but in general subsidies account for about £1.50p pw on the average bill, cheap at half the price, you can double that and more if you read the telegraph or mail.
However my comments were regarding the amount of manufacturing and investment (or lack of) brought to the UK by the massive increase in RE.
A final point, you can’t exclude nuclear from the renewables debate.
“imposition of higher prices for electricity due to subsidies on our bills”
Utter rubbish. The amount on your bill for support of RE in the UK is a small portion. And it’s a price worth paying to get a cleaner energy grid.
If you want to avoid the worst of climate change, then we have to transition and to transition, there’s going to be cost in the near term (to about 2025-2030ish), after which it will be cheaper.
So, short term pain for long-term gain. The good news is that given the rate of fall in the cost of RE, the day when things will become cheaper for the average consumer due to RE has already arrived in some circumstances and we could reach the predictions of savings in cost as early as 2025.
I do wish people would read before replying, we have had an increase on our bills it’s small but well worthwhile.
However it’s a fact that we pay slightly more due to subsidies, therefore your comment is the one that is ” utter rubbish”
Not the very, very windy coasts of NoCal and SoOre.
However it may be cheaper to bring Wyoming’s wind to the West Coast than going offshore with floaters. We’ll have to see how that works out.