Reimagining wind: Scaling innovation for a renewable future
By Ffion Rodes, Chief Engineer for Wind, NCC
The wind industry is entering a new era — one defined by scale, ambition, and the urgent need to deliver clean energy at pace. The growth in turbine size is not just a technical evolution; it’s a signal of how far we’ve come and how much further we need to go.
Today’s offshore wind blades exceed 115 metres in length — single-piece composite structures that exceed the wingspans of the largest aircraft. These massive rotors are essential to unlocking the capacity needed to meet global renewable energy targets. But building more of them, faster and better, is the challenge we now face.
To meet this demand, we must ramp up industrial capability. That means improving productivity, reducing TAKT time, enhancing quality, and doing all of this while maintaining cost competitiveness. The goal is clear: deliver a cost of energy that keeps wind at the forefront of the global energy mix.
At the heart of this transformation is a vision — to recreate for the wind sector what the NCC already achieved in aerospace. In aerospace, we have delivered a fully automated, pre-production composite wing skin. We’ve incubated suppliers, built partnerships, and industrialised the process. The result? A thriving ecosystem that generates jobs and drives innovation here in the UK.
A few examples of where we are already making a difference:
- Applying state of the art digital tools to enhance reliability of the infusion process and improve quality outcome;
- Combining cross sector challenges on defects, developing technology and methods for early detection to reduce time lost in rework and repair; and
- Circularity by design identifying where and how to build in reuse and recyclability and helping the industries grow to deliver that
Now, we’re applying that same mindset to wind.
By leveraging integration of fundamental materials science, advanced composite engineering, and automated manufacturing, combined with collaborative research across sectors, we’re not simply scaling blade dimensions — we’re optimising design for manufacture, structural integrity and lifecycle performance for large structures and we’re building a smarter, more resilient industry.
The future of wind is bold, and it’s being built today.
If you would like to learn more about how we can support your ambitions or shape what comes next in wind energy and large structures innovation, book a meeting with our experts.