widesight

It's a difficult time for businesses everywhere, but where there is threat there is also opportunity. This article may be wrapped up in a parody of 80s inspired anxiety, but the message is a serious one: Let’s prepare for a different world - one where there is no space for procrastination, complacency or mediocrity.

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Supporting offshore wind energy during the COVID-19 crisis.

Collaboration is the cornerstone of the offshore wind sector deal and success relies on companies working together to achieve more.  So TMS Media and Widesight have created the Offshore Wind Communicator, a new tool to help inform, excite and engage people and organisations about the value within the sector.

Offshore wind is already a phenomenal success story and a network of organisations is working hard to bring about an even brighter future. There are projects underway to join industry together, foster innovation, draw in new talent, engage coastal communities and bring forward a large and expert supply chain. Industry bodies and supply chain leaders are working together to secure a policy environment that will enhance confidence, certainty and investability.

But we can’t be complacent: we need to keep driving understanding, promoting opportunities and proving expertise. It’s not a simple task, but coordinated communication across the sector and beyond is a big part of the answer.

Video content can feel like a scary thing to budget for. When speaking to clients we like to break down a video into two elements:

1. The messaging (the film script)

2. The production

The first is set-in-stone, because like a movie, a video's success will be down to the story. The second is more fluid, so there can be a sliding scale for a production budget. With thought we can produce the video on pretty much any budget. Our 30 second short 'A Different Perspective' is a demonstration of what can be achieved on the lowest budget. We started with the idea of showing an  optical illusion on camera and then introducing some simple compositing special effects to make it even more believable. We gave ourselves a day to make the video - from concept to upload. We could have perfected it, improved the effects and extended it to include additional elements...introducing the sliding scale of budget.

In this video we show - very quickly - what goes into making the video. We don't discuss sound design and music - because that's the theme of another of our videos coming soon! (subscribe and hit that notification bell to get a heads up when we upload that one).

If you have any questions please contact us, we'd love to hear from you.

[email protected]

Head winds or tail winds? All eyes are on the third CfD allocation round.

This Friday (20 September) will see the results of the AR3 Contracts for Difference competitive auction when successful applicants will be advised of the strike price, target commissioning date and allocated capacity. The outcomes of the latest round are a critical milestone on the route to 30GW of UK offshore wind by 2030. 

Recent rounds have seen astoundingly positive outcomes in terms of costs and confidence. For round 3, the low administrative strike prices for offshore wind (£56/MWh for 2023/24 and £53/MWh for 2024/25) would seem to indicate that those projects are likely to be more attractive than other technologies such as wave (£281/MWh and £268/MWh) and tidal stream (225/MWh and £217/MWh). However, this time around there are reservations amongst the optimism.

With the sector deal, the Government committed to growing offshore wind to 30GW by 2030. The deal is far-reaching, drawing together ambitions for inclusivity, skills growth, regeneration, infrastructure, enterprise and exports. The scale of collaboration between Government, supply chain partners and industry/community groups has galvanised an already eager and energetic sector, underpinned the investability of new and future projects and signalled the UK’s determination to consolidate its place as a leading player in the global sector as it develops.

But whilst the sector deal signalled strong Government support for offshore wind, elements of the latest competitive auction process have disappointed many in the industry and beyond. The available capacity across several less established technologies has been capped at 6GW, supported by an annual budget of just £65m of the £557m allocated to future CfD auctions.

BEIS’ position is that the budget allocation for round 3 reflects the plummeting cost of offshore wind - and confidence in the industry’s ability to continually drive down costs. Similarly, BEIS argues that the capacity cap is necessary in order to ensure the process is sufficiently competitive as to deliver the lowest possible cost to consumers.

But industry leaders have challenged this, concerned that the main impact will be to unnecessarily slow the growth of offshore wind, despite the commitments made as part of the sector deal just a few months ago. SSE has been especially vocal. Referring to the CCC report that led analysts to suggest the country will need 75GW of installed capacity by 2050,

CEO Alastair Phillips-Davies has argued that the sheer volume of projects in development would guarantee a fiercely competitive auction.

Someone asked us a good question recently – “Do you only work with renewables?”.

They asked because they are involved in the whole energy industry, including oil and gas, and didn’t want that association to negatively affect our business.

We were really blown away by the thoughtfulness and diligence of the question. But the question continued to niggle at us for days afterwards. We resented the fact that an expert felt obliged to ask the question – because of the politicisation, radicalisation and over-simplification of our most important industries.        

Renewable energy provides a solution to the most important challenges in the modern world. To many it is the answer to climate change, to some it is about a self-sufficiency and to others it brings power to communities who have none.  So, decarbonisation has been pushed to the top of the global agenda by political and social demand to quickly bring about a transition away from fossil fuels to low or no carbon sources.  

However, and it’s a massive however, fossil fuels make up 80% of our energy mix and 90% of the world’s trade is transported by traditionally fuelled ships. Without fossil fuels, there would be no renewable energy technologies and without existing infrastructure, the energy transition would be impossible.

We are dependent on them.

And it’s not just about dependence. Renewables are often presented as disruptive and fresh – and in many ways they are. New technologies, new fuel sources and new ways of working and measuring success have created a sector that is rewriting traditional industrial models.

Yet, at the same time renewable energy technologies have largely evolved from the continuous innovation and technical expertise of highly traditional industries - in particular energy and marine which, together, make everything we do possible.

To crusade against our oldest industries is to misunderstand their importance to our past, present andour future. Protest doesn’t createchange, innovation does.

Every company involved in energy and marine is, or can be, part of the energy transition – and we want to help them make the most important contribution they can.

We are proud to be providing the media hub for Global Offshore Wind 2019. We will be interviewing many of the key stakeholders in the offshore wind market and releasing videos throughout the event. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see them.