Innovation That Matters

The rows of white lines is the Hornsea One or Hornsea 2 facility.

Next time you fly into Gatwick from Northern Europe take a look out of window about 30 mins before landing; you may well see one of the UK’s offshore wind facilities. The scale of these is something to behold! Row upon row of (almost) free, (almost) clean energy, with all this impressive generation capacity built up over the past 20 years.

Note: yes, I am aware of the irony of burning jet fuel, while admiring an offshore wind farm!

Today (31st July 2023) over 30% of UK energy is being generated by offshore wind.

The rights to these are managed by The Crown Estate. In their words,

One of the facets of The Crown Estate Commissioners (TCE) as an independent commercial business is to effectively and sustainably manage the UK seabed. With the offshore wind resource in the UK being among the best in the world, this places TCE in a unique position of helping to develop and sustain the UK’s energy supply and infrastructure through working with industry and government to facilitate the responsible deployment of offshore wind projects through sharing data and best practice.

https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/media/1772/uk-offshore-wind-variability.pdf

Of course, we cannot place our faith in wind alone, it has to be a (major) part of a diversified mix of renewable sources and storage solution, however this shows the progress that we’ve made and the potential. These sources must be integrated with very significant grid improvements, and financial incentives and support to reduce energy consumption.

Efficiency (yes, changing how people live, work and play), wind, solar, storage and grid improvements should get us where we need to be.

With the UK’s net zero pledges under political attack now is the time to make our views as concerned citizens crystal clear.

No, I’m not a fan of nuclear.