Two of the main barriers to development are capacity within the supply chain and on the transmission network. Is there enough manufacturing capacity for all the blades, generators, towers, foundations, cables and so on that we’ll need between now and 2030 and beyond? Are there enough personnel and specialist ships for the construction work? And is there enough capacity on the transmission network to get the power from where it’s produced to where it’s used across Britain? That depends not only on connections to shore but also capacity within the onshore transmission network. That will be sensitive to its own supply chain constraints but also, in particular, regulatory processes for approvals for the expenditure and planning permission. This last aspect is a huge risk – for the onshore network, overhead lines are the cheapest way of doing it but attract many objections.

The last major onshore transmission development in development Scotland, between Beauly and Denny, took more than 10 years and that wasn’t even for a brand new line, rather the rebuilding (with each tower being around twice as high) of an existing line. Undergrounding of transmission is far from being a panacea – it’s more expensive, there are major electrical engineering and construction challenges and it disturbs soils, potentially causing significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Another challenge is that wind speeds vary. At the moment, we’re dependent on electricity generated from burning gas to fill in the gaps in meeting our demand. However, we are also using gas to top up our generation of electricity even when it’s windy. The more we can make use of the rich wind resource that we’ve got, the less we’ll need to burn gas and the less dependent we’ll be on imports.

As we develop more and more wind generation capacity, there will be times when the potential production of low carbon electricity will exceed our demand for electricity at that moment. We could export that surplus, such as to Norway where they have excellent hydropower resources. Norway is normally an exporter of electricity but water shortages there at the moment are making them think of limiting their exports. However, if they were to buy our surplus wind, they could meet their own demand for electricity and leave more of their own water in their reservoirs until times when we’d like to use their hydropower as it’s not windy here.

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In effect, that would be making use of Norwegian water reserves as a “big battery”.

Another thing we could do would be store our surplus production here. For example, we might use spare wind power to manufacture hydrogen using electrolysis and then store the hydrogen. That hydrogen could subsequently be used in transport or industrial applications or to generate electricity at the times when it’s not windy. The equipment will be expensive and the energy conversion processes will waste a certain amount of energy but that use of hydrogen currently looks like one of the best options for, in effect, moving lots of energy from times when it’s windy to times when it’s not but there is still demand for energy.