According to a report, the UK needs to triple its rate of offshore wind farm installations, despite currently being the world’s largest importer of wind turbines.
A report by the think tank IPPR claims that with its current rates of installation, the UK will miss its 2030 targets for offshore wind capacity by 18 years.
“The UK is set to fall well short of even its current target of 50GW for offshore wind,” it said.
The Climate Change Act 2008 requires the government to set a legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Fall Well Short
However, the report said that the UK is dependent on imported wind equipment, despite being the world’s largest importer of wind turbines between 2019 and 2021.There is also no native British wind turbine original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Wind installation programmes in the UK have mainly benefited producers in neighbouring European countries, such as Denmark and Germany.
The report blamed a lack of manufacturing amid other issues and called for an investment of £3.2 billion in UK manufacturing facilities.
It added that planning requirements are still “largely prohibitive to further investment.”
Furthermore, the report claimed that a recent failure of the fifth Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction round to contract any offshore wind projects “has put a serious dent in industry confidence.” CfD is a government program that supports renewable energy projects by guaranteeing a stable price for the electricity they produce.
It noted that the UK has a foreign dependency on steel plates (steel accounts for 90 percent of total materials in an offshore wind farm) and that is set to increase due to Tata Steel’s announcement closing down its blast furnaces in Port Talbot.
“In a scenario of global supply chain shortages and competition from neighbouring countries for scarce wind equipment, foreign dependency will imply unavailability of components or at best bidding for them at higher prices,” it said.
It added that in “a world of upcoming global shortages for wind equipment and competition from China, deepening and diversifying a domestic wind manufacturing supply chain is essential to any deployment strategy.”
The report called for mandates from Labour’s proposed government-owned power company Great British Energy, which promises to decarbonise the electricity supply by 2030.
China Controlling a Dominant Share
It noted that China is by far the leading country in wind manufacturing, accounting for 57 and 62 percent of the world’s capacity in wind nacelles and blades respectively.It also holds a significant global manufacturing share for nacelle components, specifically 65 percent for generators and 75 percent for gearboxes.
China also accounts for 68 percent of mining and 90 percent of refining of rare earth minerals (such as dysprosium and neodymium) which are essential for the permanent magnet generators used in wind turbines.
It said that UK deployment is critically dependent on the availability of jack-up and heavy-lift vessels (WTIVs) but that the main constructors of these specialised vessels are also Chinese.
COSCO, CIMC Raffles, and China Merchants Heavy Industry have won the majority of WTIVs orders placed in recent years by European vessel operators.
At a parliamentary debate on China in May, Labour’s Justin Madders said that it is “clear that China holds a dominant position over global supply chains that are critical to the net zero transition.”
“It controls a significant proportion of the rare metals necessary for lithium-ion batteries, wind turbines, and solar photovoltaic modules. On the lithium-ion battery chains, China is responsible for 80 percent of the supply of spherical graphite, refined manganese, anodes, and electrolytes, so we clearly need a co-ordinated response to that,” he added.
