’25 years of offshore wind shows what can be achieved by energy and climate ambition’

In December 2000, a quiet revolution began in Britain, when wind turbines in the North Sea began producing electricity for the first time. These two turbines produced four Megawatts of electricity between them, or enough to power a couple of large housing developments – just in time to generate the energy needed for households to hear Bob the Builder snatch Christmas number one.

In the twenty-five years since, the UK’s offshore wind industry has exploded. From those trailblazing two first turbines, offshore wind farms now power around one fifth of our electricity, and last year allowed us to switch off our last coal fired power station, becoming the first major economy to do so.  As we mark 25 years of UK offshore wind, that industry is driving us towards a future powered entirely by cheap, clean renewables.

Today, it seems that the success of offshore wind was predestined, driven by the increasing cost of fossil fuels and the infinite supply of UK wind. But over the past quarter of a century, we have seen the significant work that has gone into making this week’s news a reality.

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In 1999, the New Labour government worked with developers to establish guidelines for new offshore wind projects, developing an infant industry into one capable of standing on its own feet. In 2008, the then (and now current) Energy Secretary decided that UK energy policy would move away from the construction of new coal fired power stations. At the same time, the Climate Change Act was passing through Parliament, committing future governments to take action to decarbonise the UK economy. Our national story has always been about seizing the opportunities of the future, and these decisions were this principal in action.

At the time, I was working in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and experienced the considerable scepticism that met our proposal for the UK to become “the Saudi Arabia of wind power”. Wind power requires significant upfront investment which always sets off Treasury alarm bells, but we were able to make the case that because operating costs plummet once they are built, this new form of energy was an investment that would quickly pay off. With government funding models changed to suit this new form of energy generation, rapid expansion soon followed.

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At the same time, by providing long term certainty that the government was backing wind power, industry had the confidence to invest, driving tens of billions of private money into the delivery of offshore wind. That transformational shift has been how Britain has been able to decarbonise our energy system faster than any other major economy – a massive achievement that gets depressingly little attention in our national conversation.

Hard work and smart policy choices have grown the UK’s offshore wind sector from two turbines to a 77 Gigawatt behemoth of current and planned projects. This has allowed us to remove coal from our electricity mix, slashed our exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets, and is powering us towards an entirely renewable energy system.

Even as some decry the level of ambition we have today, the success of our offshore wind industry shows that through collaboration and long-term planning, achieving real transformation is well within our abilities. With our Labour government continuing to drive that revolution, what once seemed impossible is now quickly becoming a reality

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