Plymouth City Council in partnership with Celtic Sea Power Ltd is to hold the city’s first Floating Offshore Wind (FLOW) conference to help Plymouth businesses capitalise on opportunities opening up with FLOW development in the Celtic Sea.
The event takes place at The Box on Monday 30 October and aims to give city businesses an update and insight into Floating Offshore Wind developments which are progressing at a pace.
This is driven by the UK’s need for energy security and big ambitions for achieving Net Zero and the Celtic Sea, off the coast of North Devon and Cornwall is at the heart of it.
Activity has begun already, with a series of Test and Demonstration sites to be installed off the coasts of Cornwall, SW England and Wales by 2030 before roll-out at full commercial scale. This offers huge opportunities for Plymouth and the wider region – but also huge challenges.
The UK is committed to achieving its net zero and energy security ambitions and to support this, the Crown Estate, the organisations in charge of identifying and leasing appropriate sites for floating wind arrays in UK waters, will shortly offer new leasing opportunities in the Celtic Sea for the first generation of commercial-scale floating offshore windfarms. This will unlock up to 4GW of new clean energy capacity by 2035, kick-starting a new industry in the region, and providing power to almost four million homes.
Plymouth City Council is keen to examine the expected requirements for FLOW and to explore where and how Plymouth’s businesses can build from existing strengths to help deliver FLOW via some of our fantastic advanced manufacturing companies and wealth of marine innovation businesses in Plymouth.
Leader of the Council Councillor Tudor Evans OBE said: “We have recently commissioned an urgent piece of work with partners to identify how Plymouth can make the most of the FLOW opportunities.
“It’s going to be absolutely massive and our work has already received national recognition. We are working on a prospectus and this FLOW conference in October for those looking to do business with the Celtic Sea developments.”
He added “This coupled with our first ever ports strategy and looking at increasing the economic output of all our four ports – Devonport, Millbay, Sutton Harbour and Cattewater, we are already a UK port powerhouse, but we want to do more.
"We recently signed an historic agreement with the Association British Ports and Brittany Ferries to work more closely together to support the docks to grow and to work towards Net Zero, including the provision of electric shore power. The opportunity to be a part of FLOW for Plymouth is massive and we want to ensure our businesses form part of this major supply chain opportunity.”