E.ON has become the latest investor to back the Carbon Trust's Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) which was also recently bolstered with the addition of Mainstream Renewable Power and Statkraft.They team up with five founding members that include offshore wind developers: DONG Energy; RWE Innogy; ScottishPower Renewables; SSE Renewables and Statoil.

Total investment in the project is now £9.2m. Collectively the OWA partners represent 61% of the offshore wind capacity licensed in UK waters (30GW).

Offshore wind structures are taller than the Gherkin building in London and installation rates need to increase from less than one a week to as many as 2.5 per day by 2020 if we are to meet the UK's 15% renewable energy target. The OWA has the objective to reduce costs by 10% over the next decade which would enable deployment to happen faster.

Aerogenerator
Engineering firm Wind Power has also announced a new type of offshore wind turbine which it says is cheaper and avoids some of the structural problems associated with ever larger wind turbines. It is developing the Aerogenerator with architects Grimshaw, academics at Cranfield University and is also working with Rolls Royce, Arup, BP and Shell.

Those behind the design say that it could expanded to produce turbines that generated 20MW or more of power.

The Aerogenerator has two arms jutting out from its base to form a V-shape, with rigid 'sails' mounted along their length. As the wind passes over these they act like aerofoils, generating lift which turns the structure as a whole at roughly three revolutions per minute.

The first Aerogenerator could be up and running by 2013.

Tom Delay, Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, compared the UK's offshore wind challenge to building eight channel tunnels over the next ten years. "To ensure the UK meets its target of 15% renewable energy by 2020, some £75bn of capital investment could be required without the benefit of new lower cost technologies," he said.

The news comes on the same day as new figures which show the percentage of electricity on the grid from wind power increased by 31.1% last year compared to 2008.

In 2009 wind power in the UK produced 9,304Gwh of electricity or enough energy to power more than two million homes.