Delivery risks dent confidence in UK offshore wind

But a key word you mentioned there was deliver, deliver.

and delivery you know we've had the ar7 result as i mentioned um but there's still a question mark over getting from the cfd to fid and you know signing contracts lining up finance and getting into construction as it stands you know from ar7 granted the results were only in january but there is a sense coming from the supply chain that i'm detecting of a anxiety as to why more contracts aren't being signed, why more procurement processes aren't happening and when these projects are going to be delivered.

Why do you think there is now this issue around delivery and do you have any concerns in that space?

That's a big question.

Maybe we can break it up a bit.

In terms of the overall picture, I have no doubt that the AR7 projects will move ahead.

Particularly, I can't speak to the floating ones, but the fixed bottom ones, which obviously is the lion's share of capacity.

I have a high level of confidence that those projects will carry on through their procurement processes, carry on through their internal approvals processes, and we'll see those final investment decisions coming soon.

in the coming months, confident of that, having spoken to a number of the developers who've got those projects.

When I look back, we've obviously been through some bumpy times.

We had allocation round five, wasn't a great success, was it? Allocation round six, we saw Hornsey four come and go.

It's coming back.

We can touch on that later.

But overall, the industry has been very successful at delivering projects on the back of winning CFD.

So I don't think anything's changed.

You talk about the supply chain as well.

And of course, the supply chain is always going to need more certainty.

I think that's kind of statement of the bleeding obvious, isn't it? And I completely understand why.

And it's a little bit of a puzzle for me, because if you look at not just at the UK market, but even just European markets, that combined is a huge capacity with strong commitments politically.

We've seen the North Seas Agreement.

We've seen this government in the UK really driving deployment forward.

There is a lot of business coming.

There's a lot of business right now.

It is a competitive market, but I think suppliers should be able to see that this is an industry that is going to continue to grow.

There is no plan B if we don't build out all of this offshore wind.