Energy Transition Now Podcast – Episode 24 “Championing UK Offshore Wind”

David Linden [00:00:00] Hello everyone. I’m your host, David Linden, Head of Energy Transition for Westwood Global Energy Group, and you’re listening to Energy Transition Now. Offshore wind is a renewable energy source that is set for dramatic growth. Here at Westwood, we forecast that today is, so just over 50 gigawatts of global installed capacity, is set to shoot up to almost 350 gigawatts just by the end of this decade. But the question, of course, on everyone’s lips is how are we going to deliver all of this capacity? To give us their perspective on things, I’m really pleased to have Tim Pick as my guest here today. Tim’s the recently appointed Offshore Wind Champion for the U.K., I think a country that has historically made a big impact in the sector but now wants to do even more. Good to have you on the show, Tim.

Tim Pick [00:00:58] Thanks very much, David. Nice to be here.

David Linden [00:01:01] So, you are relatively new into this role. I believe it started off in May. And you’re also relatively new in, I guess, in the grand scheme of what you could call ‘new’ in the offshore wind sector. Because maybe not many people might have heard of you before, it would just be great to get a little bit of background on yourself, how you’ve got to where you’ve got to today, maybe fill in some of those historical gaps for us.

Tim Pick [00:01:34] Yes, no problem, David. So, I’m a project development lawyer by training and experience. I’ve spent about 27 years since about 1996 working with project development teams on large scale energy infrastructure, supporting those teams from conception of the projects, you know, initial MOUs, framework agreements all the way through to financial, close and construction. It’s been my absolute bread and butter for well over, well, nearly three decades now, including about ten plus years living in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. And then, given the nature of the industry, a vast amount of travel to projects all around the world. As you said, I’m relatively new to offshore wind. So, I come at this with quite a heavy oil and gas, thermal power, aluminium smelters, refining and petchem type of background. Interestingly Minister Hands, in my first meeting with him, suggested that this was some kind of elaborate carbon offsetting arrangement where I was now paying some sort of penance for my previous life! But no, it’s been, it’s been a real pleasure to get stuck into offshore wind.

David Linden [00:02:48] Yes and you know, I think every second person that you meet who’s now in offshore wind was once in the oil and gas sector. So, it’s quite a common theme. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about offshore wind specifically itself. So, many countries in the world have the opportunity to have offshore wind. But it’s somehow sort of developed quite quickly here in the UK. And until last year, when I guess the Chinese market overtook the UK, it was the largest offshore wind market in the world. Now we’re putting more in place to grow this market even further. What is it about offshore wind that’s so important here in the UK? Why are we talking about it so much?

Tim Pick [00:03:38] Well, first of all, one of my overriding impressions of the sector so far, before we get into the technicalities, is people love working in the sector. I went to the Global Offshore Wind Conference in Manchester a few weeks ago. It’s one of most positive experiences of my life. I’ve never seen an industry that buzzes like this one. People genuinely, they really understand that they’re doing something globally significant, working at that sort of complex, interface of climate change, politics, industry and innovation. So it’s super exciting. And I’ve really drank the Kool-Aid since then. In fact, I think my wife’s got sick of me talking about offshore wind and the challenges it faces. So, going to the sort of UK pipeline. Those of you who read government announcements may have picked up on the British Energy Security Strategy that was published in April. This new strategy is obviously focused on energy security in terms of what can we produce in the UK, for the UK. Wind is abundant, we have something like 880,000 square kilometres of territorial waters, way bigger than any other European any other North European country, multiples of places like Germany and the Netherlands. So, it’s an obvious source of zero marginal cost electricity to harness, and the security strategy I guess recognised that by bumping the target yet again. So, we’ve had a target of 30 gigawatts by 2030, then 40, now we’ve bumped the targets of 50 where with eight years to go, let’s hope nobody bumps it again, because we really are closing in on something very difficult now.

David Linden [00:05:39] Absolutely. I mean, it is that kind of ambition, which is quite amazing. I think other phrases like, trying to be the Saudi Arabia of the offshore wind is another one that maybe speaks to the ambition. But I guess the reality as far as I remember from that document is targeting, so that the reason we’re looking at that volume is because it should be enough offshore wind to power every UK home by 2030. Not every bit of power that we require, but certainly every UK home should be powered, or could be powered by offshore wind in theory by then. Am I remembering that correctly?

Tim Pick [00:06:17] Yes, that’s correct. And I think one of the things I’m keen for people to do, and again, my friends probably don’t like me banging on about this, but I think people need to be more connected with the source of generation. I think we’ve all got very comfortable with the idea that electricity arrives in our homes, it goes into the plug, you have no idea where it comes from. And if you download the National Grid ESO app or something like, you know, one of those sort of apps and actually have a look at where it’s coming from. It’s fascinating. First of all, you see it, it really shows you what progress the UK has made. Some days you look at that app and offshore wind is up there at 50%. But it also shows you we’ve got a way to go. There’s still a lot of gas-fired power in there, you know, and obviously that drives – currently drives – the pricing in the wholesale market, some reform proposed for that. But, you know, we have a way to go before we’re doing every home on offshore wind.

David Linden [00:07:16] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But it’s the ambition, that’s there. And I guess that takes me to my next question around, having an offshore wind champion and not many sectors have champions, there’s often companies who are seen as champions of that industry. I think in the U.S., you have got some kind of climate champions or clean energy champions that have been selected, etc., but this is kind of the UK’s first, certainly offshore wind, champion. You know, well, two things; why do we need one? Why do we need an offshore wind champion? This is not a job interview, by the way, but it is I guess it is useful in the context of what we’re trying to do. And also, what role do they ultimately play?

Tim Pick [00:08:06] Yes. It’s a super interesting question and actually one that I was asking myself during the interview process. I think the role, so just going back, first of all, going back to the energy security strategy. One of the concepts in there, so the way to accelerate the deployment of offshore wind in the UK is to accelerate the existing pipeline. Existing pipeline is what it is with a process, a project of usually around a decade from lease award through to through to a financial investment decision and commencement of construction. A decade or 12 years, something like that to, so it’s a very long period of time and if you think about that in terms of technology evolution, over the last ten years, you may have had several upgrades and iterations of megawatt turbines, so it just feels cumbersome. And so, the, the security strategy proposed the establishment of something called the Offshore Wind Acceleration Task Force, which is a cross-government industry group of people, not a decision-making body, but a body which is put together to try and unpack that ten or 12 year cycle, look at bottlenecks, look at friction in the system, see what can be done to, to ease the path. So, if you can get the ten or 12 years down to five or six years, you know this the 50 gigawatts is pretty deliverable, but it’s a big challenge because there’s some thorny issues in there like grid connections, planning, permission, etc. So yes, why a champion? I think there’s I think there’s a couple of reasons for it. First of all, to have someone whose sole focus is on this acceleration agenda and essentially co, so I co-chair the task force with Minister Hands. But he obviously has a massive waterfront of energy policy to deal with. My sole task is to follow up the work of the task force. So, it’s providing a bit of executable follow up capability, you know, someone to quarterback the work. That’s one part of it. And I think the second part, which has actually been more interesting for me, has been, it puts someone who’s half in and half outside the government system, half in and half outside industry. And so, you can say in this role, you can have lots of very direct cross-cutting conversations with people at all different levels and different stakeholders, that they maybe find difficult to have with each other, or there’s hierarchy issues getting in the way or just formality getting in the way. And so that’s been the real, that’s one of the key benefits in the role is the access you get on all to all stakeholders at a senior level, which allows you to talk to them, frankly, ask them to do stuff, remind them of their task force commitments, etc.

David Linden [00:11:26] Yes. And it’s an interesting one because I mean, you mentioned the global offshore wind event a couple of weeks ago or so, probably a bit longer, it feels like three weeks ago, now, since we’re talking at least. But within that, it was interesting because previous conferences, it felt like it was starting to stick. The topics were repetitive, if you put it in those words. Nothing wrong with the conference itself, but it’s clear that people were stuck in where they were going. Well, this year it started to feel much more like, ‘hang on, we actually know what the issues are’. We just need to go about solving them and here are some of the ways we could solve them. So, ideas were coming out with how to solve them, and I guess a champion of sorts for the UK at least is again, it’s one of those things like we know what the problems are, let’s go and try and solve them. And we know some of these are, as you say, cross-cutting issues you simply can’t solve in what I guess historically silos, right. So, we’ll come to the challenges and those things in just a minute. But there have been silos that have existed across energy, the energy industry for quite some time. How do you cut across them and help everybody see and be aligned in maybe trying to solve some of these things?

Tim Pick [00:12:35] Look, that’s correct, David. And I think I think the other aspect which I probably should have touched on earlier is coming at it cold or relatively cold, but with a lot of project development experience has allowed me to ask some pretty dumb questions or to, to probe things that look a bit odd from a sort of international or cross-industry perspective. And, you know, sometimes you ask a dumb question, you get an even more dumb answer and then you think, well, I better deal with that as part of the task force. So, it’s yeah, it’s allowed me to, I came at it with no agenda, not much prior knowledge. And, you know, I’ve been able to question everything. And obviously that you can only do that for so long until there’s going to come a point where I’m part of the furniture and quite, quite honestly, part of the problem. And at that point, I will leave the building.

David Linden [00:13:37] Well, hopefully not too soon, there’s a few things to be done! But I know what you’re saying. And actually, asking some of the dumb questions is sometimes the easiest way to solve the problem as well. So, I can see that. Now you started to talk about some of these things, but you know, the to do list can get quite long. What are, when you’re looking at this sector, what are some of those key challenges? If you could just bucket them off or break them down a little bit for us, that you are seeing, that you are coming across in that you’re thinking about, you know, this is the to do list, that we need to think about. These are the areas that the UK needs to drive that.

Tim Pick [00:14:21] Yes. So, I think there are a few buckets here, so I think there are some, I think you will see in some of the work the Crown Estate does and moving forward to Celtic Sea leasing round next year, you will see a more joined-up approach between Crown Estate and National Grid, for example, and some more and quite a lot of re-work done by Crown Estate on environmental issues so that the development community, when they’re bidding for those leases, has a bit clearer line of sight to project development than they maybe have had before. So, there’s a sort of there’s a package around leasing, and as we do more of this work and we have more wind farms and more leasing, you get into a more strategic issue for the UK as a whole, which is how would do we use our marine space? And so, as you’d imagine, there are teams within government that have that responsibility and there’s a bit of focus now on looking at that through the lens of offshore wind and ensuring that the different uses of the sea, and that’s everything from fishing to leisure to oil and gas to carbon storage to current conservation and environmental protection, and offshore wind. How we ensure that everyone can co-exist and go about their business in a fair and an equitable way. So, there’s a sort of a bucket of, let’s say, site selection, site selection type, site selection and leasing issues. I would say that’s one bucket. There’s a second bucket, which is very much the focus of the energy security strategy on the consenting and licensing process. Effectively the planning permission type process for offshore wind. The mechanisms we have for that, particularly around some of the environmental issues and the way you compensate for environmental deterioration need to be updated. And so, we’ll see in the energy bill coming through Parliament, hopefully some tweaks to that regime to make it more fit for purpose as we get larger wind farm deployment while still maintaining, quite honestly the world, you know, the UK’s world leading position on environmental protection. So, this is not about riding roughshod over the environment, and I think most people in the industry that you come across would absolutely support that. I mean, if you’re in this industry because you think it’s the right thing and you’re mitigating climate change, the last thing you want to do is be causing harm to the environment. So, it’s I think for me, it’s more about making the system work rather than finding shortcuts or something like that. So, there’s a planning and environment part. There’s a whole other bucket of issues around grid, and you’ve seen the recent publication of the Holistic Network Design, which starts to go some way towards coordination of the new look grid with the offshore wind world, ideally reducing the number of radial connections into UK beaches, which has been a source of irritation for communities for a long time. And but generally recognising that we have to get the power to where it’s needed and we’re not in the world of gas fired power plants, which you can build on the edge of cities. Now we’re in the world of windy spots miles offshore and well away from centres of demand. So naturally you have to build more cabling, ideally offshore, but you can’t offshore absolutely everything. And you know, hopefully the hopefully society will recognise that there is a need to get power to where it’s needed and there will be some disruption onshore. And then finally, I think the area that I never sort of appreciated I would get so involved with is the, as a sort of issues around ports and supply chain, so as we ramp up our ambition for deployment, we’re putting huge pressure on the supply chain. And we’re doing that at a time where many other countries are doing the same thing. So how do we support the development of a sustainable supply chain in the UK that can actually deliver? It’s fine to get the planning permission moving, but if no one’s around to build the stuff or supply the equipment then that’s a real problem. So, supporting a sustainable supply chain is a seriously important part of the exercise. And if we wind the clock forward to floating offshore wind, there’s quite a lot of anticipatory work that needs to be done to support that deployment, particularly in ports.

David Linden [00:19:26] Yes, absolutely. And we had someone on our podcast a few episodes are going to talk about that specifically and this sort of plethora of, well, technologies available, the roles that ports can play and the complexities around still, well, you need to incentivise from I guess a commercial perspective but also just generally how do you build this in the most efficient manner while choosing the right technology, etc. starts to become very complicated and everyone’s had this sort of fixed bottom mindset for so long. Once you start looking at floating it opens up another whole world of other issues that you need to deal with. It solves a lot of other things, but it also creates a lot of other issues that you need to solve.

Tim Pick [00:20:14] Agreed. And I think we need to recognise that floating, large scale floating structures are not so new for the UK and our oil and gas community have worked with those for a long time. I think the difference here is the scale of serial production you need for these very large pieces of kits and that requires very large port facilities, lots of space for both dry and wet storage, lots of assembly yards, big cranes. And you can’t start building those in 2030 to deploy in 2030 because they are they’re actually quite large port projects in their own right that take five or six years to plan and build. So, there’s a need to stimulate some investment there. And anyone who again, I’m not sure that many people read the government website so closely, but when I was when my appointment was announced, it was announced together with something called the FLOMIS Scheme, which is a grant scheme which will be targeted at stimulate stimulatory investment for floating wind deployment. So, lots of work going on there. The RFI for that has just closed as we speak. And in parallel, there is an industry and government floating offshore wind taskforce, which is trying to produce, an industrialisation roadmap to provide some very clear recommendations as to where we should place our bets, if you like, as a country, on this technology. Not to try, and I don’t think it’s government’s role to select the technology that’s clearly an industry led activity. But it’s certainly government’s role to create the right environment so that port companies can feel confident to invest, probably five years out from deployment.

David Linden [00:22:04] Yes. Okay. Absolutely. It’s hugely important. And I think the UK in particular, there has been a sense that in the past has missed out on some of those supply chain opportunities and so is very keen to get it right on the floating wind side. But let me ask you just about that. Well, quite a large to do list if you think about that, you’ve nicely bucketed for us. But there are quite a few complicated cross-cutting issues there that some folks have said that they’re addressing in one way or another, they’re different bodies, as you say. There’s different task forces and etc. But in terms of your role specifically, and I guess that was one of the reasons to bring you onto here was just to get, you know, is what you’re doing really, you’re having these discussion at a kind of, call it a cross-cutting, I don’t want to say high level, but the OWAT level, let’s just say and that’s the conduit that you could provide for people to have those conversations so they can be, call yourself a facilitator in that sense for these things. Or do you see yourself playing a slightly different role?

Tim Pick [00:23:17] No, look, there’s definitely a facilitator side of this. And, you know, if you think about changes to planning, for example, the obviously the government leads on legislative change and then the relevant government departments lead on the implementation of that and what it means for resourcing and skills in the relevant statutory body. So, I think at the OWAT level we keep the pressure on these people, which is important, and we have ministerial attention to ensure the pressure is kept on and that those things don’t drop off the to do list or get put in the too difficult box. So, it’s a facilitation role and it’s also a little bit of a Whack-A-Mole type role. So, from time to time, things come up where it’s possible for me to just jump into a conversation and help move it in the right direction. And that obviously comes with the nature of the appointment and people in the room recognising that, if necessary, you can light a fire under it with ministers or whatever. And frankly, I haven’t had to do that because I think people in general, everyone is pulling in the same direction. I’ve not heard anyone say we shouldn’t accelerate offshore wind. I’ve not heard anyone say that these processes are perfect as they stand and please don’t even question them. That’s you know, it goes to my earlier point about this industry thrives on innovation. And I don’t think anyone ever questioned it, no one ever says this turbine’s now perfect, I’m going to stop innovating. And I see the same level of focus from the OWAT members on the development process and development cycle. And people question, frankly, everything. And it’s a healthy forum.

David Linden [00:25:10] Absolutely. I think the conversations I find myself having is people are almost scared of how innovative and how fast growing and how fast changing something like this, even though it has, you know, 10 to 12 year sort of, you know, concept to build type cycle. A lot can change in 10 to 12 years. So, it is a unique industry in one way. It’s not like, I don’t want to compare it to like solar or something which has its own challenges, etc., but the innovation can be pushed through quite quickly in some ways. Well, here you are having to make some decisions quite early on, and the good thing is people are talking about it.

Tim Pick [00:25:52] I mean, correct. There’s a huge, you’re right, there’s a huge focus, and a lot of goodwill in the system, which is really helpful. And obviously, you know, you look at the OWAT task force members, there are people from companies that aggressively compete with each other and that’s fine. And they compete for their Crown Estate leases and they compete for their CFDs and frankly, they compete for the supply chain. And they’re robust competitors and they’re contributing at the OWAT level for the good of the country as opposed to anything else. So not for their own company specific issues, but to try and improve the system for everybody.

David Linden [00:26:40] Certainly. Okay. And in terms of that history, you started to talk about some of the history of the U.K. We talked about how, you know, the U.K. is not exactly a stranger to the floating structures. The UK is not a stranger to the marine industry, the offshore sector, etc. And I guess part of that’s come through the history and the oil and gas industry as well as, of course, other industries. But that is a major one. And, well, like yourself and other folks of transition over from that industry into this one. Can I ask you initially, broadly, how you are seeing that overlap, shall we call it, with the oil and gas industry here. On one hand, there’s a discussion, a debate that goes on around energy security. And then there’s the whole how do we have, continue to have oil and gas and transition to renewables. And in one way, we’re trying to as a country balance that debate. So how do you see that overlap happening and how is it filtering through the conversations you’re having? And then I guess, secondly, how is that overlap happening in terms of access to that supply chain? The skills and those are the more practical, technical day-to-day things that you’re seeing.

Tim Pick [00:28:06] Yes, I think there are a number of almost direct overlaps. So going back to the point about use of the marine space, there’s different issues. Obviously, you have offshore wind farm development, but you also have things like repurposing reservoirs for CO2 storage as well as ongoing oil and gas extraction. So, you know, it’s a direct sort of relationship there and need to coexist in that marine environment. There’s some interesting new projects coming through in Scotland as part of the INTOG Programme that should be launched later this year where you’re effectively deploying offshore wind to decarbonise offshore oil and gas installations. So, a real hand-in-glove type development. On the supply chain, we hosted a supply chain roundtable at 10 Downing Street a few weeks ago. It was a really fun event; the participants really enjoyed it. There was a very robust conversation and debate. But one story I told there was, so back in 1998, I was, as a junior lawyer I was sent off to Baku in Azerbaijan to do some homework on whether the firm I was working for should open an office there. And at that time, Baku was basically Aberdeen on the Caspian. BP and others had signed very large contracts to develop the fields in Azerbaijan. And the Aberdeen services community had just taken it by the scruff of the neck and descended on Baku. And everywhere you went it was like the, you know, the next Scottish pub opening. Somebody opened a bowling alley, and it was great fun. It was a bit of a Wild West type of thing, but it absolutely showed you what we’ve achieved in, particularly in Aberdeen, but also across the UK in terms of that oil and gas skill set our mindset and, if I wind the clock forward, particularly around floating offshore wind, if we could get to a point where, New Country X decides to go into floating offshore wind in a big way and a whole bunch of Brits descend on the place and actually do it for them. That would be a wonderful industrial legacy for the country and a really positive outcome from us being the first movers in this kind of space. So that’s, you know, so going back to the point on skill sets, I personally think having done it myself now from a legal perspective, I’m not an engineer, but offshore wind is not that big of a leap from oil and gas. And anecdotally, I’m hearing that people, companies that do both, lots of engineers within the organisations are saying, you know what, I’d like to be in the offshore wind part now please. So, I think we need to recognise the two. There’s a lot of synergies between the two industries and we should harness that. We should absolutely harness it. And frankly, companies which are operating still solely in oil and gas, particularly on the service side and the professional side. There’s no, there’s very little barrier to moving across. And in fact, it’s probably a great idea to have a look.

David Linden [00:31:42] Yes. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I think if we I think there’s a there’s a lot of work that’s being done around the gaps of skills and whether it’s manufacturing or whatever it is. The gaps are big across the board. So, there’s certainly an opportunity to go after. But I like your point around where, whether it’s Brits descending or at least the, you know, the skills from that we’ve developed and exporting those across the world is, of course, you know, a very exciting prospect. And that is precisely I guess, what’s going to be happening is that the world is going to develop offshore wind now. It’s not a UK, bit of Europe and China, of course China’s big and will continue to grow significantly. We should not forget about the Chinese offshore wind market. It’s, many other parts of the world, right? Brazil is clearly leading the charge in many ways, but we talked about Philippines, the US, you know, all these different timelines. But these are going to be big offshore wind markets and that’s going to lead to a lot of the people you’re talking to on a day-to-day basis, these companies and investors to go, well, where is my most bang for buck, my biggest, you know, most attractive investment as such. The UK has been a leader and is and continues to be a leader and is looking to maybe solve some of the kind of challenges that we’ve talked about today. But what in your mind does the UK need to do to remain attractive for the offshore wind industry going forward? What is it needs to sort of stay there as the kind of premier offshore wind country that you want to do business with?

Tim Pick [00:33:30] Yes. Look, I think we need to remember that we’ve come a long way and we are, world leading. And we and we were already, frankly, a fantastic place to do business. You know, people, you can certainly accelerate the timeline for deployment. That’s, you know, that’s a good thing to do. People have their views on our dual auction structure where we bid high for crown estate leases and low for CfDs. But people also recognise that it’s done a great job for the country in lowering strike prices. And it’s the thing that the CfD does in terms of if a destination for investment, it provides you with an absolutely rock solid mechanism to deliver a fixed price for your power. And we shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of that in terms of attracting investment. So, attracting capital investment in this kind of international marketplace isn’t top of my list of worries, my list of worries is more around the supply chain and especially things that, you know, there’s a shortage, for example, in some of the specialist vessels that are used to install offshore wind farms. And you hear these horror stories now of some of the bigger vessels heading over the Atlantic to the U.S. for the summer season of installation because rates are higher and there’s more profit to be made. And I think that’s where, that’s the sort of thing that should keep policymakers up at night, not just in the U.K., but in Europe, because I think there’s a sort of Atlantic competition going on there, hopefully, that will stimulate more of those vessels to be built. But to me, the international competition is very much in the supply chain side of it. Obviously, there is a link between that and the way the CfD drives prices. But I think, that’s where I would say that’s where I think the main concern is. Attracting capital, I think the UK system attracts a lot of capital and there seems to be talking to people in the industry, lots of capital out there to deploy into UK, CfD backed offshore wind.

David Linden [00:35:48] Yes, absolutely. And actually, it was testament, I guess, to the system that there was still quite a large participation in the latest CfD round. There was even maybe a worry that people wouldn’t take part as much as they would, but actually they took part, and he went down a few percentage points in terms of the strike price and people still felt that was sufficient to invest. Okay, Tim. Thank you. I think we’ve come to the end of our time, but thank you so much for sharing, first of all, what an offshore wind champion actually is. But, you know, the vitally important role that you are playing and just this perspective that you have on from what you’ve seen, you know, in terms of the challenges that need addressing and the balance that we need to strike to be able to, I guess, essentially reach that 50 gigawatt target and a maybe be the export hub for offshore wind of the world.

Tim Pick [00:36:50] Thanks, David. It’s been a pleasure.

David Linden [00:36:52] Perfect. And thanks, everyone, for listening as well. I hope you enjoyed it. Please make sure you subscribe. Give us a rating and share with your friends. Talk to you next time.

 

 

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