A new report has claimed that the UK has missed out on thousands of jobs because Westminster failed to develop a home-grown supply chain before handing huge subsidies to green energy firms.
Norman Smith – a former civil servant who was central in the development of the North Sea oil industry – says efforts to increase the UK share of work on offshore wind projects may now be “too little, too late”.
In a report for Civitas, he argues that if concerted action had been taken a decade ago “the multibillion-pound-a-year offshore wind business could have been carved up entirely between British firms”.
Instead, ministers have been left trying to entice “foreign manufacturers to establish satellite plants here”.
Mr Smith said: “There no longer is a purely domestic option, though, if action had been initiated a decade ago, there could have been.”
Britain already has the most offshore wind turbines in the world, creating 3.7 gigawatts (GW) of capacity, after offering developers subsidies of triple the market price of power. The subsidies are paid for through “green levies” charged to consumer energy bills.
Last week, the UK Government responded to industry lobbying to increase subsidies for offshore windfarms built later this decade and said it wanted to see at least 10GW of offshore wind running by 2020.
The industry says it needs the subsidies because it is a nascent technology. Subsidies are due to be cut gradually as the technology matures and costs reduce, but the industry had complained that support was being cut too steeply.
