Energy & Climate Change Secretary Huhne takes to the sea to open the 300MW Thanet windfarm. It’s an advance on trying to build an airport there, I suppose. But does he really expect us to believe that this is an example of “the frankly atrocious record on renewables we inherited from the last government”:

Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, said the coalition government was talking to major manufacturers including GE, Siemens and Mitsubishi, and wanted to create more energy apprenticeships. "Clearly an important objective is to move from this frankly atrocious record on renewables we inherited [from the last government]," he said. "We're looking to make sure more and more of that [investment] is provided in the UK. We'll do what we can to make sure we're attractive to investors."

Quick work, really - installing 100, 3MW, 115 metre tall offshore wind turbines since the election! Still, the French are good at civil engineering. We’ll come to that, though.

From Wikipedia: <blockquote>Thanet is one of 15 Round 2 wind projects announced by the Crown Estate in January 2004…Planning permission for the project was granted on 18 December 2006..On 28 June 2010, they [prime contractor Vestas Wind] reported that all turbines had been installed</blockquote>

Clearly all Chris’s own work, then.

We mentioned the French. When you’re building an offshore wind farm, you need some fairly impressive port facilities. Not only do you need to support a flock of rather specialised ships, but you need to receive enormous (and precision-finished) components by sea or rail, conduct the acceptance tests, and assemble them before loading them on the heavylift tug. Like so.

This is a serious business, and the builders of Thanet chose to do it in…Dunkerque. Fortunately, Chris Huhne is doing what he can to make sure we are attractive to investors. Like <a href=”http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/07/new-clean-energy-cuts-threaten-low-carbon-economic-progress-and-new-jobs/>cutting the port development programme</a>.

Here’s Nick Clegg:

"New offshore turbines, with blades the size of the London Eye, need to be built and launched from modern docks, so we need to upgrade our shipyards to take advantage of this massive opportunity...."Just imagine the docks and shipyards along the coastline of Britain coming to life and leading the world in this new technology..."Expanding offshore wind will create jobs but unless we act now, these jobs won't be British jobs. It's a scandal that 90% of the £1.75bn contract for a wind farm off the coast of Kent is going to foreign contractors, with the turbines being manufactured in Germany.""New offshore turbines, with blades the size of the London Eye, need to be built and launched from modern docks, so we need to upgrade our shipyards to take advantage of this massive opportunity...."Just imagine the docks and shipyards along the coastline of Britain coming to life and leading the world in this new technology."....Expanding offshore wind will create jobs but unless we act now, these jobs won't be British jobs. It's a scandal that 90% of the £1.75bn contract for a wind farm off the coast of Kent is going to foreign contractors, with the turbines being manufactured in Germany."