UK Offshore Energy: Next Steps

Sponsored by Burges Salmon, the Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum met this week to discuss the next steps for UK Offshore Energy and priorities for the North Sea.  James Phillips, our Head of Energy and Utilities Sector Group and Natalie Cooke, a Solicitor in the Real Estate Energy team attended. 

The event emphasised both the progress made to date and the challenges that lie ahead with the key takeaways summarised below. 

• The Goal: The UK aims to triple its offshore energy capacity by 2030, with a focus on wind, green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) for industrial decarbonization.
• Achieving this scale requires significant capital investment, including £15 billion in capital and £58 billion in grid upgrades.
• A Co-ordinated Response: Integration is key to enabling different energy sectors to work in the same space, and technology has advanced to support this 
  • CCS under current wind projects (colocation) is theoretically possible but tricky currently from a legal and planning perspective, along with ensuring that there are considerations for shipping. 
  • A coordinated response to integration and colocation is urgently required to ensure that space is optimised and projects don’t end up competing. 
  • UK has made progress here through the marine planning system which TCE has implemented. 
  • One potential solution is to have a coordinated offshore authority or task force. 
  • Work is currently underway with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which is now in the House of Lords.
• Upskilling: Transferring skills from the oil and gas sector and embedding green skills in education are crucial whilst ensuring that regional hubs aren’t left bereft:
  • Policymakers need to approach this as both a technology and social challenge, ensuring local communities are involved in project design 18.
  • There is a need for a skills passport to map existing skills against future needs and to speed up the upskilling process 19.
  • Encouraging young people to enter the sector requires showing them a stable career path and clear progression 20.
• Marine Protection: Consideration needs to be given to the noise, construction, physical impact, vibration that these will have on plankton and things at the bottom of the food chain as well as the fish industry and seabirds. 
  • Enhanced and constant monitoring is required to protect the environment. 
  • Currently we have a disjointed and case by case approach. We can unlock the potential of offshore wind whilst driving nature recovery. A healthy sea is good for net zero. 
  • Compensation Measures need to be considered to ensure that these are timely – currently each time a significant win turbine is built then compensation is required – but the payment is not triggered until the final wind turbine in a project is built 
  • Policy makers need to approach this as a technology challenge and a social and justice challenge – ensure that local communities are co-designers of projects. Ensure that economic benefits stay normal. Innovation policies should be tied to equity outcomes.
• Legal Considerations: the risk with scale, new technologies and faster-to-market projects is that the tried and tested approaches give way to haste.  So, what happens when things go wrong? 
  • The clean energy sector is starting to see disputes because the area is new and because it is promoted and pushed forward at great speed. Disputes are then time consuming and an extra cost. 
  • This new speed won’t be stopping – if anything it’ll be accelerating. Especially with data centres. 
  • Detailed governance and regulation are likely to be required for the future of decommissioning.  
  • The procedures are now becoming subject to rigorous review by the courts.  This is not unique to the UK – we’ve seen it in the Netherlands.  The ECHR has also taken a keen interest.  It is an area of legal complexity which will not go away.

The conclusion is that the geology and wind resource of the UK makes it uniquely well-positioned to lead the world in offshore energy production but that an integrated effort is urgently needed to achieve this scale. 

The geology and wind resource of the UK makes it uniquely well-positioned to lead the world in offshore energy production.