In one of the biggest steps taken towards non-polluting electricity generation in the UK, the government will today announce a big expansion in offshore wind farm electricity generation.

Licences are being issued for thousands of turbines to be built around Britain’s coastline.

Speaking on Breakfast TV this morning, Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the electricity generated could be “as much as six nuclear power stations.”

She said that as the UK has the highest potential for wind generation in all Europe is would be folly not to utilise it to generate ‘clean’ energy. The UK has a wealth of expertise in offshore work and it made good sense to capitalise on the knowledge, she reasoned.

Large areas of the seabed around the North West coast, the Wash and the Thames Estuary will be leased for companies to build wind turbines.

But not all environmentalists will be happy. Many object to the possible visual impact and some say the wind farms will impact upon bird life.

Earlier this year industry experts lobbied the government to re-start Britain’s nuclear energy program arguing that it was the greenest way forward in the long term. It was folly to leave our carbon energy sources in foreign hands after our North Sea gas ran out and wind farms would only ever be able to play a minor part in Britains total energy requirement.

Responding to this argument on TV this morning, Patricia Hewitt said the government recognised the issue but wanted to put its resources into clean energy production and energy efficiency in the first instance. There was much that could be done to reduce Britain’s energy expenditure, she said, noting that there was plenty of time to re-address the nuclear issue in a decade’s time.

“It would be quite wrong to set out now on a new generation of nuclear power,” she said.

The bandwagon of wind energy is rolling fast and the government does not want to be left behind. This program makes a major contribution to the government’s targets for renewable energy and creates up to 20,000 jobs. At the end of 2002, Germany, Spain and Denmark accounted for over 70% of the world market. In these three countries, thriving industries and tens of thousands of jobs have already been created.