£60m boost for floating offshore wind

The UK government has announced 11 projects that will each be awarded up to £10m as it puts forward £31.6m to boost the amount of clean renewable energy generated in the country. In addition to this, industry will match the investment bringing the total to over £60 million – driving green energy investment and investing in parts of the country including in Aberdeen, Swansea and Yorkshire.

The cash boost will further research and development in floating offshore wind with projects across the United Kingdom set to receive funding that will accelerate the deployment of turbines in seas around the UK. Research will focus on areas such as how turbines are moored to the seabed, undersea cabling and developing foundation solutions.

The UK is already home to the world’s largest deployment of offshore wind, however floating turbines, which can be deployed in deeper waters than conventional turbines, will boost energy capacity even further by allowing wind farms to be situated in new areas around the UK coastline where wind strengths are at their highest and most productive.

By stimulating development now through the Floating Offshore Wind Demonstration Programme, it is hoped the costs of building and locating floating turbines in deep-water areas will come down faster, growing the UK supply chain and supporting the target of delivering 1GW of energy through floating offshore wind by 2030.

One project receiving more than £9.6 million is a collaborative scheme with bases in Edinburgh, Belfast, London and Doncaster, developing and demonstrating new technologies for mooring floating turbines to the seabed, cable protection, a floating turbine base design and an advanced digital monitoring system.

Another project with bases in Cambridge, Feltham, Aberdeen and Blyth, will get £10 million for bringing forward a compact floating turbine foundation and anchors that will likely enable a 2MW, or larger, turbine to be demonstrated in UK waters.

Today’s announcement follows support for floating offshore wind in the fourth allocation round of the Contracts for Difference scheme – the government’s flagship renewable energy auction scheme – where £24m a year has been ringfenced for this emerging technology. It also follows the announcement in October for £160m funding to develop and build new large-scale floating offshore wind ports and factories in the UK.

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