Winds of Change
The UK has set its sights on low carbon leadership: The UK is already leading the offshore wind revolution, with more capacity installed than any other country. Recently, the Department for BEIS announced their intentions to at least double UK offshore wind capacity over next decade with an additional 2-4GW every year, via CfD auctions every 2 year supported by budget of £557m.
We’ve just built the world’s largest offshore wind farm right here: It’s true. Overtaking London Array as the world’s largest offshore wind farm, we just opened Walney Extension Offshore Wind Farm. And we’re not stopping there, in 2020 we’ll open Hornsea Project One – nearly double the size!
We’ve helped make offshore wind a strong and thriving industry, generating enough power for millions of homes: In the UK alone, our 11 offshore wind farms here already produce enough electricity to power 3.2 million homes. We have based this on our UK installed capacity of 3.7GW, a BEIS five-year average load factor of 38.6%, a household consumption figure of 3,828kWh per year and 27.2 million UK households. Sources: Ørsted, BEIS DUKES (2018), BEIS ECUK (2018), ONS (2017).
Our investment into Grimsby, Barrow, Hull and Liverpool has already created hundreds of jobs and by 2030 there could be 27,000 UK roles in the offshore wind industry: The Offshore Wind Industry Council is working with Government on a Sector Deal with an aim to generate at least 30GW from offshore wind by 2030. An independent analysis from Vivid Economics (Vivid Economics, Economic impacts of the UK offshore wind sector: Scenarios for the Sector Deal, Technical Appendix, March 2018) used in the industry’s 2030 vision showed that this could lead to 27,000 jobs.
Businesses all over the UK are already benefiting from the growth of offshore wind, with a growing UK supply chain now exporting across the world: UK offshore wind companies are exporting products and services to 22 countries across 5 continents (Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Australia). And, the above Vivid analysis also showed that by 2030, exports could increase five-fold!