Current focus areas

Directory of low carbon technologies

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Offshore Wind Accelerator

To meet the EU’s 15% renewable energy target for the UK, we expect that 40% of electricity must come from renewables in 2020. Currently, the figure is just 5%, so an eight-fold increase is required.

To achieve this, mass-deployment of offshore wind will be required. We believe that it has the potential to supply 25% of the UK’s electricity by 2020. To help make this happen, the Carbon Trust launched the Offshore Wind Accelerator, a ground-breaking research and development initiative. The aim is to reduce the cost of energy by 10%.

Our co-funders

We are co-funding the Offshore Wind Accelerator in collaboration with five international energy companies. Our co-funders in the Offshore Wind Accelerator are:

Dong Energy, leading Danish offshore wind farm developer with over 20 years’ experience.
RWE, Europe-wide renewables business of the German RWE group.
Scottish Power Renewables, UK’s largest onshore wind farm developer.
SSE Renewables (formerly Airtricity), the renewable energy development division of Scottish and Southern Energy.
Statoil, Norwegian international energy company.

The challenge

From 2003 to 2009 some 350 offshore wind turbines have been built at the rate of one every 11 days. They currently deliver about 1GW, whereas about 29GW will be required to hit the EU’s renewable target for 2020. To achieve this, a further 6,000 turbines must be built at the rate of one a day from 2010 to 2016, rising to 2.5 a day from 2017 to 2020. They will be bigger and more complicated to install, standing in up to 60m of water, in some cases more than 200km from shore. To read more about the challenge click here.

The solution

We estimate that it will require an investment of some £75 billion to generate 29GW by 2020. To help reduce this figure, the OWA research and development programme is focusing on four areas:

Developing new turbine foundations and installation techniques.
Facilitating access to distant turbines for maintenance.
Finding the best wind farm array layouts to optimise yield.
Researching ways to reduce electricity transmission losses.

To read more about the solution click here.

Foundation design and other initiatives

We have already run a competition to find the best new designs for deeper water turbine foundations. The shortlisted designs are receiving up to £100,000 in consultancy support, and the winning ideas will be demonstrated at full-scale.
To read more about the the foundation click here.