Bringing Offshore Wind Evidence to Parliament

IROE Chair, Professor Susan Gourvenec, led a policy brief “The impact of offshore wind farms in context: the research that can make 2050 wind targets possible. The evidence to accelerate UK offshore wind by eliminating the biggest barriers to progress.” along with a multidisciplinary team from the Southampton Marine & Maritime Institute with expertise across engineering, robotics, spatial mapping, geography, ecology, archaeology, policy and law.

The policy brief highlights:
•    The UK needs to increase rate of offshore wind installation 4-fold to meet even our most modest decarbonisation targets.

•    The UKs planning and consenting processes for offshore wind involve multiple regulators and duplicated processes resulting in longer timeframes than achieved by other countries.
•    Offshore wind uses limited space compared to other ocean sectors. <1% of the current UK seaspace currently, and < 5% to meet our 2050 net-zero targets, compared to > 10% currently used for oil & gas infrastructure, >35% used for fishing, and nearly 85% used for shipping.

•    Areas with offshore wind are correlated with lower marine environmental effects than areas with fishing and shipping, while offshore wind also contributes to stemming climate change, the existential threat to the environment.
•    Modern technologies enable monitoring and management of offshore wind farms to go hand in hand. This opens the door to adaptive management as an alternative to our current approach to planning and consenting, enabling responsible and accelerated deployment of offshore wind.
•    Deployment of offshore wind at pace and scale will deliver net-zero targets, energy security, long term growth and jobs.

The team presented the policy brief at Evidence Week in Parliament on 7th July 2026, engaging with a range of MPs, Peers and parliamentary staff across the day, including Lord Robert Mair, Dame Angela McLean Government Chief Scientific Advisor, Baroness Janet Whitaker, Jayne Kirkham MP, Caroline Voaden MP, Perran Moon MP, Jakob Habsburg for Sir Mark Hendrick MP, Saudamini Sigdel from Institute for Government, and Laura Clough, Dr Lauren Sullivan MP and Daniel Zeichner MP.

Professor Susan Gourvenec said “It was great to be at evidence week to meet MPs, Peers and Parliamentary staff in person, to present our research evidence and policy proposals and hear insights from their experiences. In particular many who came to speak with us were surprised how little space offshore wind takes up compared to other ocean sectors, by how much we need to accelerate deployment of offshore wind to meet our net-zero targets, how much longer our planning and consenting for offshore wind takes compared to other countries, and how new technologies can help speed up deployment of offshore wind to achieve net-zero, energy security, long term growth and 200,000 new jobs. They were really interested in the research behind the evidence as well as the policy implications."

The discussions highlighted the importance of bringing together expertise from engineering, environmental science, marine technology and policy to address complex challenges facing our ocean.

You can read the policy brief here https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/512179/

The research providing the evidence underpinning the policy brief is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the ORE Supergen Hub and the NERC/TCE ECOWind Programme.