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It takes more than half an hour by helicopter from Hull to get to the world’s largest offshore wind farm 60 miles off the East Yorkshire coast.
Hornsea 2 is vast, 30 miles long and 10 miles wide, but it’s about to get a whole lot bigger.
As part of the government’s auction of renewable energy “contracts for difference” Orsted, the Danish offshore wind developer, has secured funding for two new projects – Hornsea 3 and Hornsea 4 – more than doubling the size of the wind zone.
It’s good news for Orsted and other wind developers.
Last year, partly as a result of high inflation and supply chain costs, no projects managed to secure government backing.
And it’s a success for the government too.
Labour campaigned on a promise to lower bills and deliver a zero-carbon electricity system by 2030. This latest auction was the first major test of their progress towards that target.
Overall it secured nearly 5GW (gigawatts) of new offshore wind capacity.
Importantly, a contract was awarded for Greenvolt, one of the world’s largest floating offshore wind projects.
Compared with fixed offshore wind projects like Hornsea it’s small – just 0.4GW.
But sitting in deep water 50 miles off Aberdeen, it will be an early test of a technology that could allow more wind farms in more convenient locations around the UK.
More turbines are going up as part of a huge expansion at Hornsea
The government has said it wants the new state-owned power business, GB Energy, to pioneer floating offshore wind as a technology it can export worldwide – boosting the UK economy.
The auction also secured nearly 5GW of new solar, onshore wind and tidal generation projects.
It’s a good first step for the government, but it still leaves a 20GW gap to get to its target of 55GW of offshore wind generation by 2030.
If it can deliver on…
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