Work to install the first wind turbines for the world’s largest offshore windfarm off the coast of north-east England has begun as the government tries to shore up confidence in Britain’s green economy.
The energy company SSE expects to install the first of the turbines, which stand at almost twice the height of the London Eye, about 80 miles off the coast by the weekend.
Once complete the £9bn Dogger Bank windfarm will be more than double the size of the next largest offshore windfarm operating today and be capable of powering the equivalent of 6m British homes.
“It’s a fantastic day for us,” Alistair Phillips-Davies, the chief executive of SSE, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday.
“We’ve been laying foundations for the last year now. We’ve got a big boat out there, which has five of the enormous wind turbines on it and that’s circling around looking to start the installation. Hopefully we’ll see first power from this windfarm over the next week or so.”
Phillips-Davies said that future windfarms would require the government’s subsidies to keep pace with the rising costs of materials and services as a result of significant inflation in the UK economy.
“Government needs to put in place the flexibility to ensure that we can still build these windfarms,” he said. “We’ve got to remember that the price of power from [windfarms] is still way lower than what we see coming from imported fuels, and gas in particular.”
Last month the government’s green energy ambitions were dealt a blow after plans for a giant offshore windfarm off the Norfolk coast ground to a halt due to increasing supply chain costs and rising interest rates.
The Swedish energy firm Vattenfall said it would stop work on the multibillion-pound Norfolk Boreas windfarm, designed to power the equivalent of 1.5m British homes, because it was no longer profitable.
In response the government agreed to increase the subsidy pot to support new renewable energy projects by £22m to take the total budget to £227m for the next auction for subsidy contracts.
Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, said the extra funding would “help grow our economy by making Britain the first choice for investors in renewable energy projects and secure skilled jobs for future generations”.
Shapps was forced to defend the government’s commitment to its green targets at a summit of Britain’s biggest investors in green energy held at No 10 on Wednesday.
He told the gathering of about 20 energy bosses that the government was committed to pursuing its ambition of creating a net zero carbon economy despite the prime minister offering oil and gas companies a string of new exploration licences for the North Sea and billions to develop carbon capture technology earlier this week.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, visited Able Seaton Port in north-east England, where he said Dogger Bank would “generate cheap, clean energy to power millions of homes and provide the UK with greater energy independence in the face of Putin’s energy ransom”.
Dowden added: “Disruption to global energy supplies is one of the key risks we’ve highlighted in our new national risk register and working with SSE and its partners, we are making Britain more secure.”
