Offshore Wind

Joint Carbon Trust and ETI initiative on offshore wind

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and the Carbon Trust have joined forces to announce plans for an ambitious £40m initiative to cut the costs of offshore wind power and accelerate its deployment around the UK.  The initiative will involve organisations from across the spectrum of offshore wind technology and project development, plus other organisations with relevant expertise, and is expected to include a range of projects involving research, development and demonstration activities.

We are now inviting Expressions of Interest from organisations who may wish the join the initiative as –

• Project Participants, which receive funding, and form and deliver projects, contributing and developing technical skills, knowledge and experience; and/or
• Co-funders, to have access to the outcomes of the initiative in addition to the Carbon Trust and ETI, with the key benefit of shared costs.

Expressions of Interest in this programme are currently closed but if you do wish to participate please contact Alison Wall (alison.wall@eti.co.uk) or Mike Hay (mike.hay@CarbonTrust.co.uk).

Offshore Wind – opportunities and challenges

Offshore Wind has huge potential to both reduce carbon emissions and create economic prosperity¹, as well increasing energy security of supply.  The government recently announced plans to open up the UK’s seas to up to 33 GW of capacity (subject to the outcome of a Strategic Environmental Assessment), which could mean that by 2020 enough electricity is generated offshore to power the equivalent of all the UK's homes. This could be a major contribution towards meeting the EU's target of 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020².

At present, however, offshore wind is at an early stage compared to other renewable technologies (including onshore wind³) and contributes only a small fraction of UK electricity needs.  While commercial interest is growing – particularly since the UK Government announced proposals to increase subsidies through banding the Renewables Obligation – costs are continuing to rise and this threatens to delay progress.  Cost reduction is essential to provide the necessary confidence for large-scale investments and to ensure the Government’s carbon reduction and renewables targets are met.  Consequently, our initiative will ensure a strong focus on cost reduction.

To support increasing levels of deployment in line with the government’s ambition, the initiative has the following goals for 2020:

• Reduced costs: cost of energy to be reduced to the prevailing least-cost wholesale price of electricity, or lower.
• Increased yields: annual farm availability to be increased to 97%-98% or better, equivalent to onshore wind today.
• Reduced risks: Reduction in technical uncertainties to allow farms to be financed in a manner, and at costs, equivalent to onshore wind today.

Furthermore, the initiative will focus on the technical enablement of large-scale deployment.

Projects within the initiative

We expect the initiative will include a range of projects involving research, development and demonstration activities, generally funded at a level between £1 million and £20 million each, and overall, the initiative will comprise a small number of major activities.

The exact technical scope of each project will be worked up later in a portfolio development process.  However, we are interested in the following areas of work:

• Design and demonstration of novel offshore systems, including technologies that are fundamentally different to those currently being deployed.  This includes offshore-specific wind turbine designs - possibly integrated within alternative overall wind farm configurations (e.g. using centralised power conversion) - and systems for deep-water installation;
• Improvements to existing technologies, to facilitate deployment at large-scale and otherwise improve wind farm design, construction (e.g. foundation structures) and operation (e.g. access methods) – including reliability.  While perhaps less radical than the first category, such developments are vitally needed in the short-to-medium term for incorporation in wind farms to be built in the next 5 years; and
• Supporting studies on other issues critical to deployment, for instance, mapping offshore wind resources, improved environmental impact assessment methods and construction health and safety.

Participants joining the initiative

We anticipate that the organisations which become involved and deliver projects will be a mixture of large and small companies, universities and research and technology organisations.  Participants may include project developers (utilities, oil companies and others), developers and manufacturers of turbines and balance of plant equipment, offshore engineers and contractors, consultants and research groups (but this list is not exhaustive).

The UK Government and industry is taking an international lead in offshore wind farm development, and given this, the UK is becoming a natural home for offshore wind technology research, development and demonstration.  However, to bring in the best available expertise and capabilities, we expect the initiative will also involve organisations from other countries.  Organisations leading project consortia will most likely be UK-based.

More information

The ETI and Carbon Trust are managing the Expressions of Interest process together and will work together to decide how to form projects.  Leading for the Carbon Trust is Mike Hay, +44(0)20 7170 6796, and for the ETI is Alison Wall, +44 (0) 1509 564886 / +44 (0) 1793 44 4176.

1. The market could be worth at least £2 billion a year to the UK’s economy by 2020 according to a Carbon Trust study, (“Policy Frameworks for Renewables”, July 2006)
2. This was announced by EU Heads of State at their Spring Summit in March 2007.
3. Offshore wind currently represents less than 2% total worldwide wind generating capacity.