The UK's New and Renewable Energy Centre (NAREC) today officially opened its first offshore wind training tower to help technicians develop the skills that will be required to install and maintain offshore wind turbines.
The opening ceremony was attended by energy minister David Kidney, who praised the speed with which the training tower had been erected and promised to commit an additional £4.8m of funding for offshore wind R&D projects.
"As we build larger wind farms, in deeper waters, further from shore, we must work with industry to find and develop vital new technologies," he said. "The funding I'm announcing today will help companies drive down costs and share resources, which will benefit the entire industry here in the UK."
The extra funding will be provided to the Carbon Trust's £30m Offshore Wind Accelerator programme, which was set up last year with the backing of the government and a consortium of energy firms, including Dong Energy, RWE, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy and Statoil.
The initiative is designed to provide funding to projects that help bring down the cost of offshore wind energy and last year launched a design competition for projects that aim to cut the cost of turbine foundation technologies.
BusinessGreen.com has also learnt that a similar competition is being prepared for projects that can reduce the cost of access and maintenance for offshore turbines, which is expected to be announced in the summer.
"We have seen many promising concepts and innovative solutions to the technology challenges that the offshore wind industry faces as it moves further offshore and this additional funding will help to scale up our activity and enable us to continue to drive costs out of this key technology," said Carbon Trust chief executive Tom Delay.
The latest funding announcement adds to a busy week for the government's low carbon strategy after it also confirmed it is to provide over £6m to a proposed carbon capture and storage pilot project, offer grants and loans to support new green vehicle projects from Nissan and Ford, and issue an £80m loan to a project focused on manufacturing components for the nuclear energy industry.
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