The UK offshore wind industry has welcomed the Crown Estate’s move to accept eight extension projects for assessment.
Trade body RenewableUK led the reaction on Thursday after the seabed landlord said up to 3.4GW of wind farms will progress to the next round of the process.
Head of Policy Barnaby Wharton said: “It’s great to see The Crown Estate announcing significant progress on extending eight UK offshore wind projects.
“This could give us enough new capacity to power up to 3.75 million more UK homes a year, further strengthening our energy security and boosting the UK’s world leading offshore industry – including our thriving supply chain.”
Norwegian company Equinor said the UK is an exciting offshore wind market with “solid potential” and so it is “only natural” that it would look to expand existing operations there. Equinor (formerly Statoil) operates the 402MW Dudgeon offshore project.
Several other offshore wind companies took to social media today to also welcome to announcement.
Head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit Jonny Marshall wrote on Twitter that the projects could potentially add another 14TWh per year, which is around 4% of total generation in 2017.
Image: RUK hails impact extension projects may have on the UK supply chain, which includes the Siemens Gamesa blade factory in Hull (Siemens Gamesa)