UK tops up offshore energy pot by £500m

For offshore wind it means another £300 million, for floating wind, tidal stream and others, it means another £268 million. Onshore wind is increased by £65 million, to £120 million.

According to ORE Catapult head of analysis Tom Quinn, if all the budget is used up through the Contracts for Difference (CfD) procedure, another 4.2GW of bottom fixed wind, 362MW of floating wind and 20MW of tidal stream projects could get the go-ahead.

“An important caveat though is that history tells us that the capacities of projects to progress don’t always add up to these theoretical maximums,” said Quinn.

“The decision to significantly raise these budgets is both welcome and necessary to support the sector on the path to achieving 2030 targets of 60GW of offshore wind, and 5GW of floating wind specifically.

However the outcome is far from certain as it depends on the bids being made.

Last year’s auction did not receive a single bid from offshore wind developers, and the government has so far refused to say how many were received this year, although the bidding closed some weeks ago.

The UK government has set a target of 60GW of offshore wind deployment by 2030, including 5GW of floating wind. Longer-term, legally-binding net zero targets by 2050 will likely require more than 100GW of offshore wind to be deployed.

Reacting to the announcement, the British Hydropower Assocation (BHA) has complained that the government has railed to support sub-5MW power generation, such as hydropower, which it says is critical for the energy mix.