A bag of wind

I have remarked on many occasions that Johnson and Brexiteers in general are good at grand announcements, but are very poor at managing that plan. Brexit, track and trace, the UK's own sat nav system, various public sector IT systems, Brexit, and so on.

So, when yesterday in his keynote speech at the end of the virtual Conservative Party conference, announcing that offshore wind generating capacity should increase from 10 GW to 40GW in just ten years.

This is ambitious.

And fantasy. No matter how you look it.

I work in the wind industry, and new products take a long time to design and develop. Our V164 turnine was begun, in secret before I joined the company in 2010. It took 6 more years before the first commercial project was installed, and then it wasn't smooth.

And then there are bottle necks.

Installation vessels are scace and charted years in advance.

Managing one new descipline in the supply of wind turbines is hard enough, but to do them all from design, source, manufacture, assemble install, commission and then operate the windfarm for two decades, but to learn all would be challenging and would possibly take double the timeline that Johnson has set. If that is what he has done.

And then there is the actual designing, of the hardest is blades. Blades have to be strong, and light, and able to survive 20 years offshore. The design of an aerofoil over 100m long, that are able to operate when in close proximity to other turnines is a hard task. Airflow dynamics has its own department in blade design.

Even if you get one of the two major players in offshore wind to design and build the turbines, they have to have capacity to do so, and according to estimates, 5 complete turbines would have to be built each week, every week for a decade. Capacity will already have been filled for the next three years, meaning just seven years to build the 30 GW, and if the UK wanted local suppliers for subcomponents, it is not clear if there are such suppliers of items such as planetary gearboxes here.

All this said by the same man wo stated just seven years ago that offshore wind wasn't strong enough to blow the skin off a rice pudding. But he seems to have changed his tune.

A statement to make headlines today, and forgotten tomorrow or next year is just about what we should expect from this busted flush of a PM. But I will happy to be corrected in the fullness of time, of course.