UK takes first place in offshore wind power
The UK has become the world’s number one for wind farms built offshore with the completion of work at Centrica’s Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms near Skegness. The 597 MW of offshore wind farms put the UK [population 60 million] ahead of Denmark’s [population 5.5 million] installed capacity of 423 MW The Prime Minister told the recent conference of the British Wind Energy Association that the UK now gets 3 GW of electricity from wind power. On a visit to the newest wind farms off the coast of Skegness, Mike O’Brien, Minister of State at the Department of Energy & Climate Change, said ‘We are now getting 3 GW of our electricity capacity from wind power. Offshore wind makes up 20% of that capacity, and the wind farms I am visiting today are the ones that have made the UK the world’s number one for offshore wind power.’ Five more offshore wind farms currently under construction will add a further 938 MW to capacity by the end of 2009, and the Government is assessing plans to increase the total by 25 GW in the future. Sam Laidlaw, CEO of Centrica, says, ‘Not only is Lynn and Inner Dowsing the biggest wind development in the world, it represents a major milestone on the journey to secure the UK’s future energy needs.’ According to Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, by 2020, the UK market could represent almost half of the global market for offshore wind power
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