Q171 Mr. Dave Anderson: I will start off on a negative. I am not actually very positive, particularly about offshore wind and how you are going to start building in the North-East, but I want to ask some practical things about when they are in place how they will be run, particularly in relation to security of supply. How much work is being done about maintaining, repairing and replacing equipment in what is one of the most hostile environments in the world, the North Sea?

Mr Edge: Clearly operating offshore wind farms is a new and challenging area. I think the real challenge is to develop turbines that do not go wrong in the first place.

Q172 Mr. Dave Anderson: That will never happen.

Mr Edge: You can design a lot of reliability into it, particularly if you take a very different approach to that for onshore turbines. Essentially, each onshore wind turbine is a mini power station. It has got all the things in one place and then you just module them up into wind farms. You can centralise a lot the electronics and some of the supporting stuff into stuff that you can do onshore, and therefore you are generating dirty power in a big offshore wind power station, taking it ashore and cleaning it up and putting it onto the network. So there are different concepts that you can apply which will make it a lot simpler, make the things that are actually out at sea a lot simpler and more robust. That is a process that we are only embarking on: because actually what people have done is take those onshore turbines because they work and take them offshore. It is clearly the case that, unlike onshore, where you can just drive up to the bottom of the tower with a white van and get out and fix it, you have to go out on a boat or a helicopter and fix stuff. There is quite a way to go, but given that we operate oil and gas platforms at high reliability, in fact in some places they are completely inaccessible, we have incredibly reliable machinery down at the bottom of the sea, which you simply forget. I fail to see why we cannot apply that kind of innovation. The trick is to do it in a cost-effective way, with large numbers of turbines, but I have got a belief in UK engineering capability. We have shown it in the offshore oil and gas field; we can show it in the offshore wind field.

Q173 Mr. Dave Anderson: I am glad you feel like that. I used to work in the energy supply industry as a mechanic. Things do go wrong. The fact that you say that they will not go wrong is just not true.

Mr Edge: I am saying you can minimise it. Certainly we are also working on ways to improve on it - it is already quite safe, but improve further the safety of the transfer from turbines - so that when you do have to go, it is really safe.

Q174 Mr. Dave Anderson: Another issue which has been raised is about the impact on bird life. The RSPB have asked us, in discussions we have had up in Aberdeen, about surveys on the impact of the oil industry on bird life. Have you as an industry looked at the impact, not just in terms of bird kill but also on habitats and feeding grounds?

Mr Edge: There is a huge amount of work going on on this one. I think it is fair to say that my members in the offshore wind sector have spent more money on researching the offshore environment than any other sector in the history of the UK. We have been forced to do that amount of environmental impact work and, in addition, the Government has been doing a lot of survey and research work. The Crown Estate is taking money from the auction fees that are put down for around one or two projects to set up this fund called COWRIE (Collaborative Offshore Wind Research into the Environment), and that has put several million pounds into these studies. So I think it is fair to say that we have been looking at this very, very closely and to a huge extent offshore wind in the marine environment is massively benign, it has a very, very low impact, and in some cases you can argue with the artificial reefer bed we put something there and, bang, there are barnacles, or whatever, and it becomes a fish sanctuary: you are actually helping to promote biodiversity.

Q175 Mr. Dave Anderson: Lastly, the impact on military radar. We understand that will not happen offshore.

Mr Edge: No. There is definitely an issue, particularly in the southern Wash, with the air defence radar trimming in Staxton Wold. We have been working very closely with all parties and the wind industry on site - the Department for Transport, the Ministry of Defence - and we signed this Memorandum of Understanding bringing forward the technical solutions, of which there are a number. There are patches to the radar software, potentially, somewhere down the line. QinetiQ are trying to develop a stealth blade so it does not show up on radar screens. There are technical solutions being done. We believe that the Government needs to put more effort into this. Our members have brought forward three million pounds of funds to do this work.

Q176 Mr. Dave Anderson: You mean more money or more effort?

Mr Edge: I do mean more money.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

The full transcript may be read here.

Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT