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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of research by the Renewable Energy Foundation, The Performance of Wind Farms in the UK and Denmark, published in December 2012, which demonstrates that the working lifetime of offshore wind turbines is shorter than previously thought; whether they intend to revise their low carbon-energy policy or policy on wind turbines as a result; and whether they support any development to turbine technology which could deliver increases to their working lifetime.

The Department periodically reviews the evidence base on the generation costs of renewable electricity technologies, including their operational lifetimes, and when appropriate publishes reports on the topic. The most recent of these publications can be found on the gov.uk website, and a copy is also attached here.

The UK’s oldest offshore windfarm, Blyth (off the coast of Northumberland), was commissioned in 2000 and is still in operation today. The world’s oldest offshore windfarm, Vindeby in Denmark, was decommissioned in 2017 after 25 years of operation.

The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult has a programme of work looking at lifetime asset management and has recently announced an operations & maintenance centre of excellence in collaboration with the University of Hull.