Bad timing on wind turbine blades

Feb 22 2010 by Kelley Price, Evening Gazette

Welsh chief blows Teesside trumpet

THE Government has already sent a clear message that it wants to see the North-east emerge as one of the country’s leading offshore wind construction hubs.

Writing for the Western Mail newspaper on the eve of launching the country’s sixth low carbon economic area in South Wales this month, Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, pictured, said underwater platforms for the upcoming Gwynt y Mor offshore wind farm - a massive project near Llandudno - should be built on Teesside.

The project will require £1bn of steel, which Mr Hain indicated should come from Corus in South Wales.

His statement, seen as throwing down the gauntlet to the offshore wind industry, which sources up to 70% of its materials from abroad, gives extra ammunition to campaigners who argue that mothballing the Teesside Cast Products steel plant at Redcar is premature.

They argue that a business case can be made for TCP if the plant is put at the heart of an integrated manufacturing economy based on renewables.

Several substantial offshore contracts have already been awarded locally with another major project win due to be announced in March.

Corus itself is already a major player in the offshore wind market.

Its construction and industrial division provides steel plate for manufacturers of wind turbines - the largest blade in the world is due to be made just a few miles up the coast from Teesside by US-backed Clipper Wind at a plant visited only last week by the Prime Minister.

At the time, Gordon Brown said: “It’s a new industry where Britain can be number one.”

However he appeared to fail to make the connection between the emerging green economy and the embattled steel industry just down the road.

On Thursday, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said the Government would back a business plan to bring TCP out of mothballing.

It would not take a huge leap of imagination for his department to work with that for energy and climate change to ensure that, as Mr Hain indicated, steel for offshore wind forms a part of that plan.