Offshore staff
LONDON — Britain’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has included two ports on a primary list for potential funding to help upgrade their facilities to support floating offshore wind.
Associated British Ports (ABP) Port Talbot in South Wales and the Port of Cromarty Firth in northeast Scotland applied for grants under the Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme (FLOMIS).
The DESNZ will undertake further reviews before implementing any final decisions later this year.
Dan McGrail, chief executive and co-chair of the Floating Offshore Wind Taskforce, said Britain needed to upgrade and upscale its ports to manufacture and assemble the large components of floating offshore wind turbines, which will be more than 250 m tall on giant platforms.
“Ultimately we need to upgrade 11 ports around the UK to maximize the industrial opportunities… Our analysis shows that £4 billion [$5.08 billion] of private and public investment in ports by the end of the decade would drive £18 billion [$22.85 bilion] of wider economic activity," he said. “RenewableUK predicts that floating wind will represent well over half of the UK’s offshore wind generation by 2050. Floating wind projects can be built in deeper waters further out to sea where wind speeds are even higher.”
The UK at present has 80 MW of floating wind operational from the Hywind and Kincardine projects, with the government targeting 5 GW of operational floating wind capacity by 2030.
According to RenewableUK, Britain’s overall pipeline of floating wind projects at all stages of development currently stands at 36.1 GW from 49 projects, behind Italy with a total of 43.4 GW across 48 projects, of which most are at an early stage of development.
03.20.2024
