Up to 3,000 jobs are to be created following ScottishPower Renewables’ decision to proceed with East Anglia ONE, a 714MW wind farm to be built 26 miles off the Suffolk coast.
As well as creating jobs during construction, East Anglia ONE will spend at least half of the total £2.5bn investment in the UK supply chain.
The company, which aims to have the wind farm operational by 2020, believes East Anglia ONE will be the most cost efficient offshore wind farm ever to confirm construction after it secured a price of £119MWh. The project will bring also bring new investment to the East Anglian economy, including a £25m deal with the Port of Lowestoft to be the home of the wind farm for 30-plus years.
Charlie Jordan, ScottishPower Renewables East Anglia ONE project director, said: “East Anglia has some of the best conditions anywhere in the world for the development of offshore wind, and we are fully committed to the region, with future developments already in the pipeline.
“ScottishPower Renewables is leading the way with its approach of actively working towards a target of at least 50% UK supply chain content over the lifetime of the East Anglia ONE project. We have already worked with a wide range of companies across East Anglia and we look forward to working with many more.”
Over the last year ScottishPower Renewables says it has held supply chain events across the region, and the company’s Skills Strategy for East Anglia ONE has now been agreed with local councils across Suffolk, with the aim to develop a local skilled workforce who can access future employment opportunities within the offshore wind industry.
This will include funding student places on technician and college courses in the local area and launching a STEM ambassador programme.
Construction is planned to commence in 2017, with the first turbines of 102 installed by 2019.
Nice to see a bit of money finally being spent in the East of England. Now perhaps we might even get the first mile of motorway built in Norfolk and Suffolk and some reasonable mobile phone coverage in the Breks
More economic madness on the lemming-run. The concept of paying unreliable generators a premium for supplying whether or not the power is needed has strangled the UK electricity industry. There is no money in having stand-by generators that are not economic, so new generators will not be built (apart from the opportunistic diesel generators that seem to be the answer to DECC.
Japan and Germany are building their future on coal: the lowest real cost energy source, but our idealistic leaders cannot see that they have reason for this. The UK’s minimal contribution to the world’s carbon burn has befuddled their brains and will cost us all very very dear in the future.
It has always been a source of amazement to me that our leaders can be so damn stupid! I’ve come to the conclusion that it is because they spend so much energy and wit climbing the greasy pole, that there is none left for making sensible decisions when they reach top.
We are sitting on massive resources of coal, oil and gas but are busy spending taxpayers billions on windmills. Today, the stats show that the existing vast array of wing farms is generating about 0.4GW – less that 1% of demand. Bonkers!
Oh, the demon CO2 I hear you ask. That particular band-wagon / gravy train is about to crash in flames.
Hi Bill
I thought wind farms contributed 11% in 2015 or is that misinformation I’ve been given.
Jack you say that our leaders idealistic, however don’t you think you are being a bit Luddite in your own comments on the issue.
John, I don’t recall saying that in my comments. They should be idealistic, but well advised and I do think that the current set of advisors are poor.
Jack: spot on!
CO2 is a purely beneficial gas that promotes plant growth and benefits agriculture. It might cause a tiny amount of beneficial warming.
If anyone is mad enough to want to reduce it, then shifting from coal to gas and nuclear power are the cheapest.
Diesel generators are a desperate third world solution!
I am not sure I agree with all of you but either way we need to quickly decide and make plans for the future energy supply and not debate new plans for years, by which point the technologies we approve and decide upon are already out of date.
Renewable energy as a primary source is realistic and investing in ‘windmills’ is not stupid. in 2015 Germany’s renewables supplied a new record of 78% of the demand on certain days and averaged 27.8% over the year. They do this by having varied sources such as biomass supplementing wind etc. They also do not limit onshore windturbines to 125m like we do in the UK thus not allowing the larger (up to 200m), more efficient turbines to be used that will reduce cost/KWh, installation and maintenance costs and not need government subsidies to compete against traditional power methods.
I am not saying we should or can do the same as other countries but we should be learning from others and investing now in modern, efficient technologies and not shooting ourselves in the foot by limiting the technologies we have access too.