News

.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

26 April 2007

It will supply more than the entire domestic electricity demands of the whole County, it’s supported by all the major environmental groups and it will create thousands of new jobs in East Kent and beyond.

Earlier this week I met with representatives of London Array who are the group of companies planning to build the world’s very first gigawatt-scale offshore wind farm. It will be installed in the outer Thames Estuary some 12 miles offshore from Margate and it will represent a massive £2 billion of capital investment.

You’d think this would be sufficient to encourage the support of everyone in the County, even KCC are plugging it but it seems that Swale Borough Council is opposing the sea-to-shore plug-in unit and causing expensive and damaging delay.

I know that some people are wholly opposed to wind turbines of any kind and there will always be individual objections about the impact of such projects on local habitats but there is always a balance to be struck in these matters and in this case the scale tips heavily in favour of wind power.

The promoters calculate that this project will save 2 million tons of CO2 and contribute as much as 10% towards the Government’s 2010 electricity renewable target and it’s not surprising that it has support from Business Link and the South East England Development Agency.

But hear in Dover, we have even more immediate reasons for supporting this project because during the construction phase and well into London Array’s fifty years licence period there will be great job opportunities for people in East Kent . The company has identified the Port of Ramsgate as it’s main logistics base and they are looking at brown field land that straddles the Dover District and Thanet border for creating their onshore construction yards.

There will be a need for a lot of traditional skills, many of which are transferable from shipping and marine engineering but there will also be a need for training up local people in new and specific skills associated with this relative new technology.

The importance of this is that here in East Kent we have the opportunity of creating a major centre which would meet the skill needs of Array and also become a major training hub to service the wider wind power industry which is about to take off. We have a unique opportunity to exploit first mover advantage to become a worldwide centre of excellence for offshore wind power.

All the complex offshore consents are in place with the Department of Trade and other government agencies and the finances are secured but despite the recommendation of the their own Planning Officer to approve the project – little Swale’s Planning Committee is still saying no.

On the first page of the Carbon Trust’s Renewables Innovation Review, is the bold headline – ‘The UK should eliminate barriers to wind deployment and develop longer term options’. I’m sure the Trust didn’t have Swale in mind, but who could blame us for targeting their Planning Committee.