Lord Turner predicts UK offshore wind capacity could hit 100GW
Published 16 July 2020
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The UK could raise its 2050 target for offshore windfarms to 100GW, the former head of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has predicted.
Lord Turner, who chaired the climate change watchdog from its establishment in 2008 until 2012, also told a webinar organised by the specialist renewable energy fund Glennmont yesterday (15 July) that the EU and the UK must develop a “strategic vision” for North Sea offshore wind.
Noting the CCC’s existing target of 75GW of offshore wind for the UK by 2050, he said: “They are now revising those figures. It’s not impossible that the UK will end up saying the rational path of our electrical system could have 100GW.”
“If you look at the overall developments across all the countries around the North Sea, we are going to see hundreds of GW of generation.”
Lord Turner, who now chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, said the international thinktank is urging the EU and the UK to set out a North Sea-wide vision for achieving this dramatic scale-up in offshore wind deployment.
Such a strategic vision, including a “massive amount” of generating capacity and transmission, could help drive down the engineering costs involved in delivering offshore wind, he said: “We ought to be developing a vision of an undersea shared transmission grid in the North Sea.”
The UK’s requirement that each offshore windfarm should have its own transmission infrastructure to bring the electricity that it generates onshore, which the government has just announced it is reviewing, is “not efficient”.
He also said surplus electricity from offshore windfarms could be used to produce hydrogen, which could be stored and later burnt in gas-style turbines when demand for power is greater.
Lord Turner said hydrogen could be produced offshore and used to fuel shipping, which Orsted is are currently investigating with ferry company Maersk.
The peer, who also chaired the Financial Services Agency, said that the steady returns offered by renewable projects ought “be highly attractive” to investors, such as insurance companies and pension funds, given the low yields on offer from bonds.
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