Government

For more information on Government please visit:

Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)

The DECC website contains a list of useful sites

UK Trade and Ivestment

• UK Trade and Investment - Home
• UK Trade and Investment - Renewable Energy

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) help companies rise to the exciting opportunities and challenges that globalisation offers. They enable overseas companies to find UK contacts in the UK - including the the offshore wind sector.

Official UK Government energy statistics:

UK Energy in Brief 2008 - Free booklet of facts on UK energy production consumptions and pricing

• Climate Change Projects office

The Crown Estate

The Crown Estate

The Crown Estate manages highly diverse property portfolio across the UK. It is above all a commercial organisation balanced with a strong sense of stewardship, and takes its responsibility to manage the assets sustainably very seriously. Their job is laid down by Parliament: to enhance the value of the estates they manage and to earn a surplus for the benefit of the UK taxpayer. Their multi-billion pound property portfolio annually contributes over £200 million to the Treasury and encompasses four main estates; urban, rural, Windsor and marine. It has extensive marine assets throughout the UK, including 55% of the foreshore and owns virtually the entire seabed out to 12 nautical miles, including the rights to explore and utilise the natural resources of the UK continental shelf (excluding oil, gas and coal).

As part of the Energy Act 2004, the UK government vested the right to license the generation of renewable energy on the continental shelf within the Renewable Energy Zone, an area 200 nautical miles out to sea, to The Crown Estate.

The Crown Estate has utilised the UK’s advantageous geographical position to harness offshore wind power.  This has included four leasing rounds of the seabed for offshore wind farm development which in total, including existing, new offshore wind renewable energy programmes could provide over a third of the UK’s electricity requirements. 

The UK is leading the world in installed offshore wind capacity with 1GW. Rounds 1 and 2 have the potential to deliver around 8GW of offshore wind energy into the UK national grid. Round 3 is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the world with a potential market investment of £100 billion. The Crown Estate is co-investing up to 50 per cent of the cost of getting the 9 zones to the planning stage and is funding works to speed up delivery of the sites. The partners are contractually committed to seeking consent for at least 32GW of projects by 2020. Another programme is within Scottish territorial waters, this aims to deliver an additional 6.5GW of offshore wind energy with a potential market investment of £20 billion.

The Crown Estate believes that offshore wind energy generation needs to play a role in ensuring the UK energy security and mitigating climate change. The Crown Estate will continue to work closely with the industry and Government on what happens post-2020.