Construction of the tens of gigawatts of floating wind plant off Britain’s coastlines currently planned will require that as many as 11 ports are “transformed as fast as possible” into next-generation industrial hubs if Britain is to capitalise on planned lead-off development of deepwater sites in the North and Celtic seas, a high-level taskforce has flagged.
Investment of some £4bn ($4.8bn) will have to be injected to ready a “minimum three to five ports” to install turbines onto the platforms in Scotland, two to service the Celtic Sea play now emerging, and a further four around the UK will need to be “revitalized” for manufacturing steel and concrete components for floating foundations, if the region’s 37GW project pipeline – the