Last month we celebrated the cutting-edge offshore wind research of our doctoral students at the Aura CDT annual conference.

Prof Rob Dorrell, Co-Director of the EPSRC Offshore Wind CDTs said:

“We would like to thank all the industry representatives who joined us as keynote speakers, panellists and delegates at our annual conference. Over three research-packed conference days, we all benefited from an exciting exchange of ideas between new and established experts in offshore wind energy and look forward to new collaborations that emerge from those discussions.”

Prof James Gilbert, Co-Director of the EPSRC Offshore Wind CDTs said:

“In the Aura CDT we talk a lot about our students being the future leaders of the offshore wind sector. At the opening, I urged them to make the most of the conference, as we were privileged to also have the current leaders of the sector with us. I am proud that each one rose to the challenge, whether it was presenting their research or helping to run conference sessions. It was particularly gratifying to see students present who are now working in industry or academia.”

Opening the conference programme, Dan McGrail, Chief Executive at RenewableUK delivered an introduction to the “Offshore Wind Industrial Growth Plan: expanding horizons of UK supply chain and skills”. Dan delivered an inspiring talk on the future of offshore wind while stressing the importance of a just energy transition:

“We’re not talking about a nascent sector anymore but a central part of the economy and a really important part of the UK’s future”.
“We need to take lessons from history in the energy transition to make sure we don’t leave communities behind. Creation of long-term, meaningful jobs is key.”

In the first afternoon session of the AuraCDT conference, we welcomed keynote speaker, Tim Pick MBE, Chair of the UK’s Offshore Wind Growth Partnership, and a Commissioner on the UK’s Clean Power 2030 Advisory Commission. Tim delivered a presentation on “What does Clean Power 2030 mean for Offshore Wind?” and talked of sector challenges:

“30GW is in the bank for 2030, the question remains whether 43GW is achievable by that date? There are a huge stack of projects in the planning and development system that are due to come online shortly after 2030, so the challenge is to not only drag them forward but at an acceptable price.”

Industry panel on growth plans

The talk was followed by a panel discussion on “What Will the Industrial Growth Plan and Clean Action Plan Deliver for the UK?” Chaired by Jane Cooper, Executive Director of Offshore Wind, RenewableUK, who was joined by panellists:

• Alex Louden, Head of UK and Ireland Innovation Hub, Ørsted said, “The Industrial Growth Plan is a fantastic starting point, it sets out a vision towards 2030, which requires so many building blocks across suppliers developing and manufacturing technologies and the developers integrating them. We need that joined up ecosystem to get to where we need to be”
• Zoe Keeton, Head of Stakeholders and Local Markets, RWE added, “A lot of project sponsorship comes from individual active projects, looking at specific and current challenges; structurally, as an industry we need to get better at funding research into the wider issues facing the industry as a whole.”
• Jane Cooper added, “There is a genuine desire among developers and operators to work with UK supply chains so the industry is aligned to government policy in this area. One of the issues is about trust, you need to build your relationships and it’s important to be able to ask difficult questions.”
• Tim Pick said that “A lot of the really interesting technical companies are solved in small companies, in the supply chain rather than the developers. It’s worth unpacking what we think of as industry”
• Chong Ng, Applied Research Associate Director, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult said: “In the UK, we have good research but we need more commercialisation. It isn’t healthy for companies to stay as SMEs long-term, they need expand to be able to supply windfarm developers.”
• Victoria Bessonova, Wind Energy Analyst, SSE Renewables and CDT Researcher made a call for greater links between industry and academia: “At Aura we’re quite a unique environment as a lot of students are co-sponsored by industry but without that that, the industry doesn’t seem very accessible … doing visits and guest lectures could help spark those conversations and help research become more relevant to industry.”

We were also privileged to welcome speakers Danielle Lane, Director of Offshore Development UK & Ireland at RWE, Katherine Protheroe of Osbit and former CDT student, Jordan Burgess, who is now a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Ecowind BOWIE project.

Celebrating our talented PhD researchers

Thank you to RenewableUK for supporting our conference awards, which were presented by their Director of Offshore Wind, Jane Cooper to:

• Callum Rothon for best academic poster
• Simon Brealy and Isobel Wood for best presentation.

Thank you to our conference hosts at Loughborough University. And a big thank you to all our student sessions chairs and particularly to Di Huang and Sarah-Jane Tonks, who worked closely with the Aura CDT Operations Team at the University of Hull to organise the conference and were key to its smooth running.