UK Skills and Technology Critical for Next Wave of Global Renewable Development to Excel: ONYX Insight

The global wind industry must look to leverage the UK’s unique experience running offshore energy assets, operating in a subsidy-free energy market, and building digital infrastructure that transforms power production in order to meet global net zero goals.
 
At the same time, the UK cannot afford to miss out on the economic opportunities the next wave of renewable energy development presents. This is according to ONYX Insight, a full turbine predictive maintenance solutions provider helping to accelerate the wind industry.
 
The UK has half a century of experience managing oil and gas offshore infrastructure and a workforce of approximately 30,000 with transferable skill sets.
 
In addition, the UK’s shallow seabeds and abundance of wind, located near to dense populations on both the UK mainland and in northern Europe, meant the country was first to build material offshore wind farms and now boasts the biggest offshore wind market in the world. 
 
With this comes unparalleled first-hand experience operating offshore energy assets and building out an efficient and effective supply chain to support them. As the offshore wind industry looks to scale to meet ambitious targets – Boris Johnson has raised the UK 2030 offshore wind capacity target from 30GW to 40GW, and the IEA says an additional 70GW of offshore wind capacity will be needed every year until 2050 – the UK’s experience running offshore energy assets will prove invaluable to the industry.
 
By 2030, only 6% of wind assets will be covered by subsidies, down from almost 70% now. This means it will become ever more competitive to operate in the Wind sector going forward.
 
As one of the first countries to reduce subsidies for new projects, the UK quickly learnt how to operate in a merchant market. It did this by looking at ways to be responsive to pricing mechanisms and how to attract investors by tailoring operations to improve profitability.
 
These established ways of working can serve as global blue-prints – providing proven operations and maintenance strategies for subsidy-free environments as these conditions roll-out across the world.
 
As a hotbed of technology innovation - nearly half of all energy start-ups in the UK focus on clean energy and nearly half of those are digital energy start-ups according to the IEA - the UK is in the perfect position to construct, deploy and export digital energy infrastructure critical to the realisation of global net zero goals.
 
Digital infrastructure that collects, consolidates, stores and analyses key data on energy asset performance will be essential to maximise energy output, manage geographically diverse portfolios and sites further out to sea, reduce the cost of energy, and ultimately enable a stable transition to renewable energy sources.
 
Bruce Hall, CEO, ONYX Insight, said: “The UK has a huge opportunity to capitalise on the next wave of renewable energy development by becoming the global leaders in digital IP – creating it, perfecting it, and exporting it.
 
“This digital IP will become the backbone of our global energy network – enabling the industry to understand how our energy infrastructure works, learn better ways to run and continuously improve asset energy production and lower energy costs.
 
“The message to the energy market is clear,” concludes Bruce, “the UK is ready to lead the way.”