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The UK Government announced its Second Call for offshore wind energy demonstration projects today. The Second Call has, according to the Government a value of £10 million (US $16.4m) ring fenced for the deployment of offshore wind.
The Offshore Wind Demonstration Call is being administered through Solutions for Business, a Government support vehicle for new products. The aim of the funding is to stimulate and encourage the development and demonstration of offshore wind technologies and components for larger multi-megawatt wind turbines.
The UK Government desperately wants the wind farms in UK waters within the 2020 timeframe to meet its climate change commitments. Bids must be received by 28 August 2009. Application forms, guidance notes and the call for proposals are on the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) website.
This drive for new offshore wind energy technologies stems from a realisation that critical barriers are holding up the construction of the desired 29 Gigawatts of wind farms at sea. The demand for offshore wind is enormous – however supply chain companies such as wind turbine manfacturers and vessel companies cannot cope. This shortage of supply results in unworkably high prices. Capital costs have more than doubled over the past five years, which has caused serious caution in the wind development industry. In order to meet renewable energy targets, it is expected that the wind energy industry will need to pour in £75bn of investment – a similar scale of investment to that seen by North Sea oil and gas at its peak.
The offshore wind demonstration programme is specifically aimed at speeding up the development of next generation multi-megawatt wind turbines. It complements other programmes striving to speed up the delivery of offshore wind such as The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator.
The Carbon Trust is working with wind energy companies to try and reduce the cost of offshore wind energy by 10%. The Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) will comprise a set of major research, development and demonstration activities with a focus on reducing the costs of offshore wind energy.
Roger from Solar Power Facts
August 11th, 2009
I get tired of reading about blockages in supply holding up projects. If the nation treated this as an emergency such as they did the second world war, they would have resources coming out of their ears for these projects. The fact that this is not the case shows just how relaxed the government’s attitude is towards the environmental crisis.