The UK is sitting on a GBP12 billion (USD15.7 billion) a year investment opportunity to develop offshore wind, according to Offshore Energies UK (OEUK).
Speaking at the 2024 Celtic Sea FLOW (Floating Offshore Wind) summit held at the Eden Project, Offshore Energies UK director Katy Heidenreich outlined how OEUK members are building 13GW of the government’s production target of 55GW of wind energy by 2030, and the need to pull together investors and businesses with the capacity to make this ambitious energy production target a reality.
The vast expanses of open sea around the UK are a natural resource that puts the UK second only to China in terms of offshore wind energy capacity. Up to 4.5 GW of floating offshore wind electricity production is lined up for development in the Celtic Sea. “’There will be a lot more offshore wind capacity towards the end of the decade and into the next, some of this driven by licences in the Celtic Sea, which will offer a huge economic boost to the Southwest of England and Wales,” said Heidenreich.
“This upcoming wave of new energy investments is a strategic opportunity for the oil and gas supply chain to diversify its revenue streams, enhance its capabilities, and extend its reach into international markets. However, none of this is a given. All requires huge investment – by 2030, an average GBP12 billion per year will be needed.”
OEUK also championed the potential for carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) projects in the UK. Confirmation of GBP22 billion (USD28.8 billion) of funding over 25 years can help kickstart the UK’s CCUS sector starting with the deployment of the Hynet cluster in Merseyside and the East Coast Cluster in Teesside and Humberside, known as Track-1 clusters.
As OEUK’s new report Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) Insight shows, the licences awarded establish the economic framework to transport CO2 captured from emitters in industrial clusters and safely sequestering it in geological stores under the sea and was a prerequisite for the clusters to reach final investment decision followed by the construction operations.
It said that Hynet and the East Coast Cluster will build the foundational infrastructure necessary to scale up CCUS, a technology that has been deemed by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to be a necessity, not an option to reach net zero. The sector could be worth GBP100 billion (USD130.8 billion) to the economy by 2050
