Disruptive Innovation and Industrial Modernisation
Pathways to Securing Offshore Renewable Energy Supply Chain Competitiveness
The recent success of AR7 of the UK’s CfD programme, combined with the announcement of unprecedented European commitment to advance ORE technologies via the Hamburg declaration, shows the renewed confidence of the offshore renewable energy sector. To fully capture the long-term value of these developments, the UK must now move quickly to strengthen its domestic supply chains.
With international ocean energy competition intensifying and climate timelines becoming ever more pressing, strengthening UK clean energy supply chain competitiveness is critical. The UK has the opportunity to not only establish itself as a leading location for offshore renewable energy innovation, but also to become the nation synonymous with translating advances in technology, materials and manufacturing processes into competitive, scalable industrial production.
The Policy and Innovation Group at the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with Supergen ORE Hub, is pleased to announce the latest report in their Ocean Energy Policymakers Toolkit series. This report examines how the UK supply chain can lead the development and manufacture of the disruptive and highly innovative offshore renewable energy technologies, subsystems and components that will define the sector’s future.
Leapfrog to Lead Position
The UK should adopt a Disrupt and Modernise supply chain strategy, creating the conditions for new technologies and advanced production methods to emerge and scale. This approach enables a leapfrogging transition, allowing the UK to overtake, rather than simply catch up, in high-value, hard-to-secure segments of the ORE value chain.
Disruptive Innovation
The UK should take up a Disrupt and Modernise Policy Framework and focus on translating innovation leadership that gives the UK the edge on industrial capability, securing our long-term strategic position within global offshore renewable energy supply chains.
The report explores how disruptive innovation and industrial modernisation can position the UK as a global leader in offshore renewable energy supply chains, unlocking and retaining long-term socioeconomic value, supporting a Just Transition, and delivering sustained carbon reductions.
We welcome this underpinning research that recognises that both disruptive innovation and industrial modernisation is critical for the UK to succeed in markets where it currently lacks traction. As the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership and its partners plan to access new markets highlighted in the Industrial Growth Plan, research of this quality is invaluable in shaping informed debate.
