The UK government has promised yet again to make a massive investment in offshore wind energy. Speaking at the Conservative party conference, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the renewable would power every home in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland by 2030. “Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle, the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands,” he said to attendees who, due to the pandemic, were watching the event yesterday.
To achieve the goal, the UK will need to generate at least 40GW of energy from offshore wind. The had previously committed to a 30GW target through an ‘Offshore wind Sector Deal’ announced in March 2019. Johnson then promised to increase that number to 40GW if his party won the general election last December.
According to Johnson, that’s absolutely not the case. He said the government would invest £160 million (roughly $207 million) in ports and factories that can develop “the next generation of turbines.” The Prime Minister also promised to deploy floating turbines that can deliver 1GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. “The Government has raised the ambition for offshore wind and renewables, and our industry is ready to meet the challenge,” Hugh McNeal, CEO of trade association RenewableUK said.
The UK already has roughly 10GW of offshore wind power at the moment, so a huge number will need to be constructed over the next decade. “An average annual installation rate of 260 turbines will need to be sustained over five years, equivalent to one turbine installed every weekday throughout the whole of the 2020s,” Aurora Energy Research calculated back in February.
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