On March 30 the UK Department for Transport confirmed launch of the £160m Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme (FLOWMIS) to supports the delivery of a national port infrastructure to facilitate floating offshore wind.
British ports have welcomed the funding but stress the need for further sums to help achieve government ambitions for sizable offshore wind targets.
Richard Ballantyne, Chief Executive of British Ports Association, the trade body which represents the ports and harbours sector, including all the UK’s man energy gateways, said: “FLOWMIS is a welcome initiative and we are pleased to see it finally launched. It will certainly help kick-off the work needed to secure some of the UK’s offshore winds targets.
“However, it must be stressed that further phases of funding could be needed in order to achieve our ambitious energy aims. The size of the task ahead is certainly bold but the UK ports industry is raring to go!
“We would therefore suggest that this is the first of several stages of funding the government allocates to help with the ongoing rollout of FLOW projects. Of course, we want to see the developments and jobs based here in the UK and the funding will be important to help secure this activity. Alongside this there also needs to be resource and improvements to the port planning and consenting processes.
“The recent report by the Floating Offshore Wind Taskforce identifies the scale of the task ahead and so we need to convince those across government about what the sector needs and sensible development timescales.”
