A £21bn ($30bn) plan to build 10GW of wind in the North Atlantic to pump power back to the UK via ultra-long undersea power cables was unveiled on Friday by a consortium with links to oil & gas major Repsol, in one of the most ambitious schemes in global offshore wind so far.

The HIP Atlantic Project – a collaboration between US-based Hecate Wind and British group Independent Power Corporation – has applied for an initial 4GW of UK grid connections and plans to deploy the first two of its 1GW individual wind farms, which it calls ‘pods’, hundreds of kilometres outside British waters off south and east Iceland.