Island has ‘incredible potential’ for exploiting offshore wind

Dr Mark Leybourne is returning to his home island of Jersey from Washington DC, where he worked at the World Bank. There, over the course of four years, he helped 26 governments worldwide to create plans to use power generated by wind farms as their main source of energy. He recently met and presented to the States sub-committee for wind energy, chaired by Deputy Chris Blin.

‘Guernsey has an incredible potential for offshore wind,’ he said, adding that the sub-committee showed ‘a lot of interest’ in the potential for offshore wind. ‘We had a really good discussion.’

The island was not alone among the Crown Dependencies, he said.

‘Guernsey’s government have been looking at offshore wind since as early as 2010,’ said Dr Leybourne. ‘The islands have enjoyed cheap electricity from France for a really long time and that contract will soon be up and when re-negotiating I think prices will go up. Future electricity supplies will be very different to today. Jersey is planning to move ahead and there is an upcoming government debate on it and in France they plan to build these wind farms all around the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man are also ahead of Guernsey and Jersey with this.’

Dr Leybourne, who is currently establishing his own wind energy consultancy business across the Channel Islands, intends to return to Guernsey later this summer for more talks.

‘The benefits [of wind power] are of course having access to the island’s own power source and green power, but there are also economic benefits such as the government generating revenue for leasing the seabed and local businesses being involved providing jobs for people, as this will take hundreds of people to do. The main concerns are impacts to marine animals and birds and visual impact, but these can be mitigated and planned for. The government needs a simple and transparent framework for investors to come in and that is what they are looking at now,’ he said.