Challenges must all be overcome
News date: 04/02/2010
Challenges must all be overcome
Jan 12 2010 by Sarah Green, The Journal
LAST week it was announced that successful bids for nine offshore wind farm zone licences within UK waters - including the Dogger Bank site off the North East coast - have been received by the Crown Estate.
The turbines which are due to be installed could generate up to 32 gigawatts of power – a quarter of what the UK currently requires – with the Dogger Bank zone supplying almost a third of that energy.
This is an exciting step forward for the UK energy’s industry, comparable with the exploration of the North Sea for oil and gas in the 1970s. Once again, the North East is at the heart of the expansion.
This announcement, however, marks the beginning of what will surely be a testing road ahead. Although the development of the UK’s offshore wind market could potentially create huge opportunities, there exist a number of supply chain and infrastructure challenges.
The shortage of skilled engineers, a need to ramp up turbine manufacturing capacity to meet demand and getting the turbines connected to the grid are all issues which threaten to hold back the advances that offshore wind would undoubtedly herald.
The announcement comes at a time when the low-carbon agenda is very much in the spotlight, with the Environmental Audit Committee’s recent report on carbon budgets proposing a 42% cut in carbon emissions by 2020.
However, the lack of any substantial agreement over global emissions cuts at the Copenhagen Summit in December represents something of a missed opportunity.
This makes it all the more urgent for the UK to press ahead with its own plans to curb emissions, including a big push on energy efficiency and serious investment in a broad mix of low-carbon power generation.
The Government's recently-announced boiler scrappage scheme is a step in the right direction. But rather than piecemeal plans to tackle energy waste, we are calling for the Government to publish a low-carbon delivery plan to help the UK save energy.
The implementation of the new wind farm zones is, in many ways, a useful ‘test case’ for the UK’s plans for energy reform on a wider scale. Good intentions alone are not enough to ensure success.
What is needed is an increased focus on the existing policy issues which need to be tackled fast if the UK is to be seen as a leader on low-carbon technologies and solutions.
Sarah Green is regional director of CBI North East