The Crown Estate manages land and sea beds on behalf of the Queen, but returns 100 per cent of its revenue to the Treasury. Across the whole estate, including retail and its rural holdings, The Crown Estate raised £285.1m for the public purse, up 6.7 per cent year-on-year.
The UK's offshore wind fleet generated a record 13.4TWh of energy - four per cent of the UK's total electricity demand and enough energy to power almost 3.2 million homes. The country now boasts 4.6GW of operational offshore wind, more than half of all installed offshore wind capacity in Europe.
Rob Hastings, director of The Crown Estate's energy and infrastructure division, told BusinessGreen the industry will continue to see growth rates of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent year-on-year through to 2020.
Speaking to BusinessGreen, Hastings championed the industry's progress on reducing costs and establishing a home-grown supply chain for turbine production and plant management.
He said costs are falling at a steady rate, from £150 per MWh to £120 per MWh for the latest contracts - putting the industry on track to hit the £100 per MWh target by 2020. He added that once costs fall below £100 per MWh then offshore wind becomes competitive against any rival sources of clean power.
The industry now needs to focus on investing in the UK's burgeoning offshore wind supply chain to drive costs down further, Hastings said. He said Siemens' plans for a new turbine factory in Hull - due for completion by 2018 - makes "a huge amount of sense" for industry efforts to cut costs. "You don't have to look at these things for very long to realise that they are very big, and the logistics in terms of production and how you manage them are not well suited to remote operations," Hastings said. "Getting the supply chain to support what needs to be done in the UK is really quite critical over the next three to four years." Hastings also rebuffed industry concern that a shortfall in the Levy Control Framework (LCF), which controls the amount spent on low carbon energy, would stunt the industry's growth in the next few years."The investments which are to be made over the next two-to-three years are pretty much fully funded," he said, adding there was still "quite a lot of mobility" in the LCF that could allow projects to be financed between now and 2020.
It seems the UK's offshore industry is looking buoyant in comparison to its onshore sibling, where up to 250 planned projects may not go ahead due to government subsidy changes. But with concerns over the LCF lingering and the rapid rollout of offshore wind in Germany and China, the industry cannot be too complacent if it is to retain its world-leading position.
(www.businessgreen.com)
