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Date:
Fri, 10 Oct 2025 - Thu, 09 Oct 2025
Whole-System Thinking - Joining the Dots Across the Energy Transition
Industrialisation doesn’t happen in isolation. To make the energy transition real, we need to think about the whole system - not just how we generate clean energy, but how we turn that energy into products, supply chains, and economic value.
That means investing at every stage - from early R&D, to scaling up new technologies, to building factories and supporting long-term maintenance and operations. It also means making sure decisions are joined up across government departments, across regions, and across sectors - so we’re not solving problems in isolation.
Only by thinking across the full lifecycle - from ideas to infrastructure, and from deployment to long-term capability - can we turn innovation into industrial strength.
Floating Wind - and the Case for UK Manufacturing
Floating offshore wind is the litmus test. Projects are moving towards Final Investment Decisions (FIDs) by 2028. These will shape global supply chains for the next decade.
This is a pivot point - and a chance for the UK to lead in next-generation solutions, if we act now.
The components involved - blades, floating platforms, towers, cable systems - are some of the largest and most complex structures ever manufactured, often made of composites or hybrid materials. Their size makes local manufacture not just an economic argument, but a practical one.
If we want the UK to do more than host turbines - if we want to make the parts, build the platforms, own the capability - then we need to invest now in the skills, facilities, and digital tools that make this possible.
From Policy to Production - The Test for UK Industrial Strategy
The UK’s net zero ambitions are now embedded in multiple government strategies - from the UK Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan to the Offshore Wind Industrial Growth Plan (IGP). Each recognises offshore wind as a pillar of our future energy mix.
The 2024 IGP identified offshore wind as a £25 billion opportunity for the UK economy by 2035, with the potential for over 100,000 new manufacturing jobs. Blades alone could deliver £6 billion in GVA over the next decade.
The challenge - and the opportunity - is to make sure those numbers translate into UK-made products, jobs, and supply chains.
Because without the investment to complete the innovation pathway - all the way through to late-stage R&D and industrial deployment - we don’t just risk losing the economic value.
We risk creating great research for others to commercialise, world-class innovation that delivers someone else’s growth. And that’s the difference between a transient industry - and a long-lived, sovereign manufacturing ecosystem.
By Richard Oldfield, CEO at NCC
Offshore wind is one of the great UK industrial success stories. In just over a decade, we’ve gone from early adopters to global leaders - driving down costs, increasing deployment, and pushing into new frontiers like floating wind.
But we now face a familiar crossroads. The UK excels at early-stage innovation - the science, the pilots, the policy ambition. What’s missing is often the next step - the industrial follow-through.
If we’re serious about clean growth, resilience, and unlocking regional potential, we need to be just as committed to how we manufacture as we are to how we innovate.
We must make - and manufacture - more in the UK. We cannot continue to rely on others to deliver 50% of our future energy system.