World's largest offshore windfarm opens in Thames estuary

David Cameron hails 'great day for Britain' at opening of London Array, which will power 470,000 homes

guardian.co.uk, Jessica Shankleman, Thursday 4 July 2013

Link to video: David Cameron opens world's largest offshore windfarm in the Thamesestuary

With enough capacity to power two-thirds of the homes in Kent, the 175 turbines rising out of the waters of the Thames estuary officially became the largest offshore windfarm in the world on Thursday.

David Cameron was on hand to cut the ribbon on the massive renewable energy project, a move that industry sources hoped would herald a renewed enthusiasm from the government for green power in the face of considerable animosity to windfarms on the Tory backbenches.

"This is a great day for Britain and a big win for renewable energy," Cameron said at the opening ceremony. "London Array shows you can build large-scale renewable energy projects right here in Britain. This is because when it comes to clean energy, the UK has one of the clearest investment climates globally."

The project is owned by Denmark's Dong Energy, Germany's E.On and Masdar of Abu Dhabi. Its 630MW capacity – enough to power 470,000 homes – has been fully operational since April, but on Thursday it was officially opened by the prime minister alongside the climate change minister, Greg Barker. The consortium predicts that it will save 925,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

"Such a strong signal from the very top of our political establishment will help to put an end to the siren calls from the naysayers who have failed to appreciate the scale of the opportunity Britain has here," said the RenewableUK chief executive, Maria McCaffery, in a statement. "We need to maintain our pole position in offshore wind energy to reap the full economic and environmental benefits."

London Array has taken the crown of the world's largest offshore windfarm from the 500MW Greater Gabbard project off the East Anglian coast. The UK currently has more than 3.6GW of offshore wind power capacity, but is expected to have around 18GW by the end of the decade.

The news was welcomed by Greenpeace's executive director John Sauven, who said London Array demonstrated the UK's ability to deliver large-scale renewable energy projects. However, he urged Cameron to accelerate the government's efforts to tackle climate change and cut emissions across the energy sector by agreeing to a target in the energy bill that would decarbonise the electricity sector by 2030.

"We're now world leaders in an industry that some wrongly dismissed in the past as a nice-to-have," he said in a statement. "But if offshore wind is to continue to provide jobs and economic growth for the UK and reach price parity with nuclear by the 2020s, David Cameron needs to do more than ribbon-cut. He needs to give the sector long-term certainty by agreeing to cut carbon completely from our electricity sector."

In related news, RWE has also announced that it has installed the last wind turbine at the 325MW Thornton Bank offshore windfarm off the coast of Belgium, confirming that the project is now expected to be commissioned in the coming weeks.

• First published by BusinessGreen

The MPI Discovery, a jack-up vessel operated by MPI Offshore, is seen at the
 London Array project in the Thames Estuary. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/
Getty Images

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London Array becomes world's largest windfarm as last turbine comes online