Hello and welcome to the Spectators podcast. I'm Kate Andrews. Last month, the government

released its 10-point plan for what it dubs the Green Industrial Revolution. At the top of the

list was offshore wind, pledging to produce enough power for every

home by 2030. Offshore wind currently constitutes over 50% of renewable energy produced in the UK,

with costs coming down considerably in a matter of years. But does offshore wind have its limits?

Is it always a good deal for the consumer? And how far can it realistically

advance us on our road to net zero carbon emissions by 2050? To discuss all this and more,

I'm joined by Quasi-Quartang MP, Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, Benj Sykes,

VP for UK offshore at Orsted, and Sir David King, the former chief scientific advisor

to the UK government. This podcast is kindly sponsored by Orsted.

So Quasi, let's start with you. The government has said it wants to make the UK the Saudi Arabia

of wind. What exactly does that entail in practice?

So if we look at where we are now, we have something like 10 gigawatts, a bit more, of offshore wind capacity.

And that represents something like 35% of the globally installed capacity.

So Britain is a world leader in this.

And the first point of the Prime Minister's 10 point plan was all about

offshore wind. And we've essentially increased our ambition to 40 gigawatts of capacity by 2030. So that's

less than 10 years now. And we want to essentially nearly quadruple the amount of capacity that we

have in offshore wind. And that's practically the

headline of what we're trying to do. And we could talk about how we can do this through the CFD

round contracts for difference, how we've managed to reduce the price, the cost of offshore wind power

over the last eight years and the kind of ambitious trajectory

...