£75bn for UK's biggest offshore wind programme signals new era for renewables
2010-01-15 from:Guardian author:Alok Jha
Turbines of the Burbo Bank windfarm, off the UK coast near Liverpool. The UK has the biggest wind resource in Europe.
The UK government announced a £75bn programme today to build thousands of offshore wind turbines that will kickstart the next phase of renewable power generation in Britain.
The Crown Estate revealed the successful bidders for at least 25GW of windfarms across nine zones in the seas around the UK.
The nine winning bidders are: Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd, SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd, the Forewind Consortium equally owned by each of SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft, Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power, East Anglia Offshore Wind Ltd equally owned by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft, Eon Climate and Renewables UK, Eneco New Energy, RWE Npower Renewables and Centrica Renewable Energy and involving RES Group.
The developments could create tens of thousands of new jobs, which will be crucial if the UK is to meet its targets for clean energy and carbon emission cuts.
Gordon Brown said: "This new round of licences provides a substantial new platform for investing in UK industrial capacity. The offshore wind industry is at the heart of the UK economy's shift to low carbon and could be worth £75bn and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020."
The UK has the biggest wind resource in Europe – some estimates put the UK's share at one-third of the continent's total. Secretary of state for energy Ed Miliband said: "Today's news shows we're creating the right conditions for the energy industry to invest in harnessing it." Taking advantage of the country's potential wind power will be critical in meeting the targets set by government for the UK to meet 15% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.
Round three will be the biggest wind programme announced by the Crown Estate so far and aims to accelerate the deployment of wind energy on a massive scale.