Production of wind turbines in doldrums, says report

Britain needs to build two and a half wind turbines a day to have any chance of reaching its target of supplying 35 per cent of its power from wind by 2020, according to a report from Datamonitor, the business-information provider.

The rate of construction of mostly onshore wind farms is progressing at one turbine every 11 days and many proposed farms, both on land and offshore, are caught up in either planning or financing difficulties.

The Crown Estate recently announced that it had granted licences to build a record number of offshore farms, but Datamonitor argues that the ambitions are little more than hot air while no supply chain is in place.

Alex Desbarres, senior renewable analyst at Datamonitor, said: "From both an engineering and a financial perspective, the challenge of building 32 GW of offshore wind power - the equivalent of 6,000 turbines - by 2020 will be extremely difficult and unlikely to be achieved."

Even if planning and financial hurdles were overcome, accelerating construction of wind farms would be hard, the report says.

There is no turbine manufacturing capacity in the UK, and Vestas, the world's biggest turbine maker, closed its factory on the Isle of Wight last year.

However, the Government is known to be trying to persuade manufacturers, including Siemens, of Germany, to site a new turbine plant here.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, claimed on a visit to the North East yesterday that 57,000 jobs could be created by converting former shipyards to construct the wind turbines and building a UK-based manufacturing supply chain for them.

Union leaders have also called for government help in establishing a supply chain, citing the number of engineering and other skilled jobs that could be created.

Vestas said that it would not invest in factories in the UK until it was clear how the market would shape up.