News

In the year of the UK’s presidency of the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, huge momentum is growing towards focusing ambitions for the UK and globally to deliver net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

As the UK’s favoured renewable electricity generation technology, offshore wind is supported by policies for the coming decade as part of the Offshore Wind Sector Deal. This set a target of 30GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030. This target has now been superseded by the UK Government’s Energy White Paper, which increases the target to 40GW, representing a fourfold increase compared to the current installed capacity of 10 GW. The scenarios envisaged for net zero in 2050 are even more ambitious, with projections ranging from 75GW to 140GW of offshore wind (or offshore renewables). To meet this tenfold increase in offshore wind capacity in less than 40 years will require significant innovation to be achieved to reduce costs, speed up project development and better understand environmental constraints.

This COP26 Briefing Note has been written by the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub and the wider offshore renewable energy community. The Supergen ORE Hub is a £9 Million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded programme which brings together academia, industry, policy makers and the general public to support and accelerate the development of offshore wind, wave and tidal technology for the benefit of society. The briefing note sets out the current UK Net Zero ambitions, the role of Offshore Renewable Energy in meeting these ambitions, the current status of technologies and the challenges to Offshore Renewable Energy technology deployment.

You can find the briefing note here.