Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support deployment of infrastructure at ports to facilitate an increase in offshore wind capacity.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister recently announced on £160 million of new funding towards investment to upgrade ports and infrastructure, to ensure UK ports have the necessary facilities and capabilities to meet the future needs of offshore wind developers.

The expected rapid deployment of offshore wind across the UK, Europe and globally over the next decade, together with the increasing size of turbines, means that there is a need for a major expansion in manufacturing capacity in the coming years.

The ‘Offshore wind manufacturing investment support scheme’ aims to accelerate the development of large-scale manufacturing portside hubs, which could see financial support to strengthen the UK’s offshore wind manufacturing capability, creating employment and investment in both coastal communities and the wider supply chain.

Following the Request for Information in October 2020, the Department has now launched a formal competitive process on a single large coastal manufacturing site for the offshore wind industry. This would generate manufacturing clusters where several large-scale producers can co-locate.