Wind farms: Britain has enough offshore to provide power to 300,000

By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 11:01am BST 22/10/2008
Britain now has enough offshore wind farms to provide power to 300,000 homes, an energy conference has heard.

The completion of the latest wind farms off the Lincolnshire coast has taken the industry past the 3 gigawatts capacity mark.

Wind turbines: The north-east is where most of the offshore wind farms will be sited
Total wind capacity from onshore and wind farms at sea is enough to provide power for the equivalent of 1.5m homes, the British Wind Energy conference was told.In a special video message played at the London conference Gordon Brown said Britain had the best wind and wave resources in Europe and had now overtaken Denmark as the largest producer of offshore wind in the world.He said over the next 12 years the North Sea would become to offshore wind what the Gulf of Arabia is to oil production.
The Prime Minister also pledged that the economic crisis wouldn't derail Government plans for cleaner and cheaper forms of energy.
"You may have heard some people say that these difficult economic times should or will reduce the Government's commitment to building a low carbon economy. They should not and will not," he said.
"On the contrary, the investment and jobs we will create from our commitment to low carbon energy is one of the drivers that will bring us new prosperity."

Within the next decade offshore wind farms in Europe will be producing 40GW of power and about 50 per cent of the total will be in British waters.
Mr Brown told the conference that there was a potential £100bn market for renewable energy which would create huge opportunities and create 160,000 jobs.