Offshore wind farms will generate enough electricity to power every home in the UK within a decade, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged with thousands of jobs created in the process.
Speaking to the Conservative party conference, the PM said "The UK government has decided to become the world leader in low cost clean power generation - cheaper than coal and gas - and we believe that in 10 years' time offshore wind will be powering every home in the country, with our target rising from 30 gigawatts to 40 gigawatts.
"We need to give people the chance to train for the new jobs that are being created every day - in new technologies and new ways of doing things," Mr Johnson will say. "And, there is one area where we are progressing quite literally with gale force speed and that is the green economy - the green industrial revolution that in the next 10 years will create hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs.
"We will invest £160 million in ports and factories across the country, to manufacture the next generation of turbines. "And we will not only build fixed arrays in the sea, we will build windmills that float on the sea - enough to deliver one gigawatt of energy by 2030, 15 times as much as the rest of the world put together.
"Far out in the deepest waters we will harvest the gusts, and by upgrading infrastructure in places like Teesside and Humber and Scotland and Wales we will increase an offshore wind capacity that is already the biggest in the world.
"As Saudi Arabia is to oil, the UK is to wind - a place of almost limitless resource, but in the case of wind without the carbon emissions and without the damage to the environment. Mr Johnson's speech comes after he made a pledge at a UN biodiversity summit in New York to protect 30% of UK land for nature as a "boost for biodiversity". The commitments are the first stage of a 10-point plan for a "green industrial revolution" from the government, with No 10 promising the rest of the details later this year to "accelerate our progress towards net zero emissions by 2050".
The project will see the investment into manufacturing in Teesside and Humber in northern England, as well as sites in Scotland and Wales. Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven welcome the announcement, saying: "The prime minister's recognition that last year's Tory manifesto commitment on offshore wind can generate jobs whilst cutting energy bills and carbon is a great lightbulb moment.
"If carried through it would help cement the UK's global leadership in this key technology. But delivering 40 GWs of power on to the grid by 2030 requires action in this parliament."
However, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas was more critical saying “the prime minister's announcement falls woefully short of a comprehensive green new deal that would actually build a better, greener Britain”.
