The UK Government has launched an offshore wind manufacturing investment support scheme.
The investment programme is open to UK-registered businesses, which can apply for grant funding for “major investments” in the manufacture of offshore wind components.
These include blades, towers, export and array cables, monopile foundations and other strategically important components.
The investment must be used in a disadvantaged or deprived region of the UK, the guidelines have stated.
The deadline for final applications is 30 May 2021.
The investment programme supports the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s objective to deliver an economy that “works for everyone”, through levelling up economic opportunities in regionally deprived areas by investing in infrastructure, innovation and people.
This will be done by accommodating the next generation of offshore wind manufacturing, construction and installation capacity.
It is currently estimated that there are 7200 direct offshore wind jobs in the UK, which could potentially grow to deliver 60,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2030.
BEIS’ investment programme scheme will be integral to delivery of this employment, which will be essential to building back better through a green revolution in post-Covid recovery, it stated, particularly in regionally deprived areas.
The department said the scheme will “ensure that offshore wind continues to contribute to reducing costs and is more cost competitive in the UK market, and that the UK can meet domestic targets, which include delivering 40GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050, enhancing the UK’s contribution in overcoming the global climate emergency”.