The Offshore Wind Industry Council informed that a major programme of work has been launched to ensure that the UK’s low-carbon energy system efficiently leverages the increasingly large proportion of electricity that is generated from renewable sources, including offshore wind.
The new research project, Solving the Integration Challenge, is a vital part of the Offshore Wind Sector Deal announced by Government and industry in March.
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The task force started work on May 20, led by Baroness Brown of Cambridge, the industry’s Offshore Wind Sector Champion, and includes senior representatives from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Scottish Government, the Committee on Climate Change, National Grid, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, the Energy Systems Catapult, Atkins, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and companies including ITM, Good Energy, Shell, Equinor, Vattenfall and Ørsted.
It will examine how the UK can continue its decarbonisation path by building a reliable modern energy system, managing variability of demand and supply, based on renewable technologies, with offshore wind playing a key part.
The group will also publish a road map identifying pioneering techniques, like using electricity from offshore wind to provide and store hydrogen as a power source. It will also analyze ways to introduce more flexibility into the energy system, by increasing battery storage and the use of demand side response.
Earlier during may, the UK Government’s advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, published a report on reducing GHG emissions to net zero by 2050, highlighting the integral role of wind energy in addressing global warming. Namely, the report suggested that the UK could increase its offshore wind capacity by almost ten times by 2050, from 7.9 gigawatts (GW) now to 75GW by 2050.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge, the Offshore Wind Sector Champion, mentioned:
There is no doubt about the urgent need to be more ambitious in our plans to decarbonise electricity generation. With the transformative Offshore Wind Sector Deal in place, and CCC’s call for more offshore wind, the time is right for the UK to reach out and embrace innovative technologies which will help us to integrate more low-cost power from renewables onto the system
