UK offshore wind must 'stay the course'

One thing that I could draw together, though, that industry across developers and supply chain would argue for is that we've got the makings of a bit of a strategic plan, including on the industrial growth side in this sector, and we need to stay the course on that.

And I think that's definitely a key ask that everybody would get behind, is there's an opportunity for us to, with a very strong pipeline system, in this country to stay the course, make sure that pipeline is successfully executed.

Maybe before we get onto that, just staying on some of these key factors.

I mean, you've mentioned half a dozen really significant challenges there, some of which in isolation you could class as project killers in certain areas.

Some of those are obviously government initiatives that they've ultimately added cost onto the developer.

Is the government receptive to dealing with some of these issues around grid charging, tax, for example, things that it is in its gift to deal with? Are they casting a critical eye over this and willing to help?

I believe so.

I think it's just a few months in the making, really, this work that we're doing, but that's where you get the benefit of having a joint industry government council laying some of these things out fairly transparently.

In a lot of cases, there are trade-offs.

Again, tax is an easy example to choose.

You've got a trade-off between tax take and electricity price impact.

So in a lot of cases, it's about presenting the trade-offs.

But I think if you zoom out, we have, as a technology, we've kind of gathered cost, not only due to things like inflationary pressures, but things that we've chosen to do.

So the funding that our projects provide to the Industrial Growth Fund, that will deliver a resultant benefit, of course.

And it's an active decision, which I'm very supportive of.

But I think it's the right time to step back and set all of that out and look at where we've made decisions.

Either government or industry has made decisions that are structurally driving our cost of energy and reassess all of those.

You know, industry has a role here too.

You know, developers bid into AR4, you know, nobody forced them to bid at those prices.

You mentioned around four lease fees.

I mean, again, that's a sort of a mess, a little bit of industry's own making, right? What is it that industry can do to...

It's very quick to ask government for things sometimes and ask for changes, but industry has a role here too, right? So where is it focused on this cost-cutting drive and how can it deliver? Going back to the question around Shanks' demand and call to action back in Manchester...

Yeah that's a fair ask.

I think the first key component, and I start with this because actually this was a key factor in helping us originally significantly reduce cost of energy in offshore is keeping focus on execution in construction and operation because if we successfully deliver projects that gives confidence all around whether that's confidence to those that funded the projects and made the investment or confidence of the supply chain that are doing the work if we keep successfully executing then it helps us keep contingencies down So I think it's important that we have that on the table at an OWIC level.

It's in our collective interest that every project that secures a CFD goes on to be successfully executed.