This week marked the launch of the Government’s much anticipated Industrial Strategy, placing coordinated investment in clean energy technologies at its core. Central to this is the Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, which underscores the scale of the opportunity and the urgency of action.

A commitment to double investment in clean energy industries over the next ten years sends a strong and necessary signal to the market. Equally encouraging is the focus on scaling up domestic offshore wind turbine manufacturing, and the clear recognition of systemic challenges, particularly around grid connectivity, that must be addressed.

The overall picture is best understood as a jigsaw. Each piece, though important in its own right, only reflects a part of the picture. We have all the necessary jigsaw pieces in the sector; the task is not to create new pieces, but to align the ones we already have to ensure they fit together effectively.

In addition, it should also serve as an important reminder that our challenges and our opportunities do not exist in isolation from other sectors. They form part of a wider ecosystem that needs to be connected if we are to fully unleash the economic potential that offshore wind presents to drive significant economic growth for the UK.

With analysis suggesting that the offshore wind supply chain could contribute up to £92 billion in additional GVA by 2040 and support as many as 100,000 jobs by 2030, the scale of the prize is clear. It is an opportunity the UK cannot afford to miss.

The UK market also exists within a broad and competitive international ecosystem. The Industrial Strategy seeks to harness valuable international partnerships for frontier industries to capitalise on economic resilience and growth opportunities; a process that began with an agreement with Japan in March 2025, complemented by our own burgeoning partnership with Japan’s Floating Offshore Wind Research Association.

The opportunities in offshore wind are evident throughout the strategy; from increased R&D funding, particularly in AI, to targeted support for innovative SMEs. Accelerating planning and consenting processes is another critical area. The commitment to streamlining these through technology and innovation, highlighted in the Strategy’s Technology Adoption Review, has direct relevance to offshore wind development. Our sector can be a powerful enabler for many of these priorities and should be positioned accordingly.

Adopting approaches like “Connected Pathways,” a collaboration between ORE Catapult and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, to learn how other sectors join the pieces of the jigsaw together is, I believe, going to be a key part of unlocking the innovation. That, together with collaboration across sectors in areas of dual-use, will allow us to move at pace to being able to drive UK industrialisation of offshore wind technologies.

The Government has set the direction. Now we must move quickly and decisively to turn ambition into action.