Latest news with #floatingturbines
Telegraph
a day ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain is running out of space for offshore wind, warns Miliband's energy tsar
Britain risks running out of space for offshore wind farms, the boss of GB Energy has warned, potentially damaging Ed Miliband's renewables blitz. Dan McGrail, interim chief executive of the taxpayer-backed quango set up by the Energy Secretary, said UK waters are becoming too crowded for traditional turbines built in shallower seas. As a result, he said officials must spend billions of pounds on new floating wind farms if it is to have any hope of hitting net zero by 2050. Unlike fixed-bottom turbines, which can only be deployed in water less than 60-70 metres deep, floating alternatives can be tethered to the bottom of the seabed by cables. This makes them the only real option for Mr Miliband as he races to build up to 10,000 new wind turbines by 2050. 'We know by 2030 that pretty much every offshore wind farm in the UK is going to have to be in water which is deeper than 80 meters,' he said in an interview with Bloomberg. 'Now that's quite a technical point, but basically what it means is that those wind farms are going to have to float, which is an area of investment that is, at the moment, quite challenging. 'There's a significant amount of private sector capital deployed, but it's slowing down in its progress, so we're going to look to come in at that riskier stage of projects in their development phase.'
Telegraph
19-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Crown Estate to build hundreds of giant wind farms off Cornish coast
The Crown Estate is to build giant floating wind farms off the coasts of Wales and south-west England. The first two wind farms will be built about 25 miles north of Padstow in Cornwall and a similar distance from Woolacombe, Devon, with hundreds likely to be visible from both on clear days. A third wind farm, due west of the holiday island of Lundy, a bird reserve, is also planned with more to follow, the Crown Estate said. However, the Crown Estate has so far failed to secure backing from UK investors for the project. The wind farm closest to Cornwall will be built by Equinor, Norway's state-owned energy giant. The second, closer to the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales, will be built by EDF, France's state-owned electricity producer, in a joint venture with ESB, Ireland's state-owned power firm. The two wind farms in Cornwall and Devon will each have a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts (GW). The largest floating wind turbines built so far have an output of about 8 megawatts (MW) so this suggests a total of 350 to 400 turbines.
