Tim Pick - Britain's First Offshore Wind Champion (recorded at Global Offshore Wind '26)

Just how is the offshore wind industry in the UK really doing? 

I put that question to Tim Pick on the fringe of Global Offshore Wind 2026 in Manchester. Tim is Britain's first offshore wind champion, a former clean power commissioner, vice president of the Energy Institute and chair of the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership.

We cover where the industry really stands, AR7 and the job of turning an allocation round into built projects, why Ardersier has upended the conventional wisdom on ports, the bet on floating wind in the Celtic Sea, and why the North Sea starts to sustain itself in the 2030s. Tim is also clear about the cost of politicising all this.

The question underneath it all is the one this show keeps coming back to. Do we build, or do we buy?

Feedback, guest suggestions and future episode requests are always welcome.

Transcript

Tim Pick: People just have that desire to make stuff and tinker with stuff, and lo and behold, they create a business.

This gets me out of bed in the morning. I think it's fantastic.

INTRODUCTION

Rob Gilbert: Hello and welcome back to How We Build Britain. A quick word for anyone new. I'm Rob Gilbert. I've spent nearly 20 years working in energy, industry and investment across the public and private sectors. I started my career in textile manufacturing, and one of my first jobs was to help offshore the last remnants of that great British industry.

I've spent the years since asking the same question: Why don't we value industry more in this country? Today, I'm a partner at Baringa, currently on secondment into government to lead the design and delivery of Great British Energy's £1 billion supply chain investment program. This podcast is my own production.

I'm not speaking here for government, for Great British Energy or for Baringa. That independence lets me explore the things I think this country needs to talk about. The premise is simple. Generations of deindustrialization have damaged our economy, our society and increasingly our security. We need to change course.

This podcast and its guests explore how. If you find this podcast useful, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Now, on with the show.

We're recording this on the fringe of the Global Offshore Wind Conference in Manchester, and my guest today is someone who needs no introduction to the wind industry.

Tim Pick was the UK's first offshore wind champion. He's been clean power commissioner. He's currently chair of the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership, and vice president of The Energy Institute. He is, in short, offshore wind royalty. Tim, welcome to How We Build Britain. 

Tim Pick: Thanks, Rob. That's extremely flattering.

STATE OF THE ENERGY TRANSITION

Rob Gilbert: It is all true. I think anyone in this industry would say the same. So thank you very much for joining me today, the Global Offshore Wind Conference is the sort of premier event, for our, industry everybody comes together. There's about 5,000 people down the road, from us, at the moment, and we'll come on a little bit to what, that means in terms of how you are viewing the offshore wind sector.

You've been... You were the country's offshore wind champion. You've been a clean power commissioner. You've been at the heart of the energy transition and seen it at close quarters in a way that others haven't over the last four or five years. How do you think we're doing?

Tim Pick: Yeah, look, I think we're doing e-extremely well on certain aspects of it. So if we look at electricity generation and the trajectory of our electricity generation there's a rapid decarbonization going on, a rapid transition from our historically coal then gas-based system to a renewables plus nuclear system.

But we need to remember, that electricity is only a portion of our national energy consumption. And we've got the hard yard still to come. So if you think about the transition around transport or the transition around home heating.

I think transport is coming. I mean, I guess I would say this as an adopter of EVs, but you know, they are better to drive. And , once you've, adopted an EV, I don't think you would ever go back , to an internal combustion engine except in absolute extremis. And hopefully, as prices are dropping with EVs, we're starting to see that happen more naturally.

I know There's a debate around whether some of the government forcing in that space should be moderated, but hopefully we're moving to a space where the market will do its job on transport, at least for EVs. I think Heating is really difficult and we're not currently sending the right market signals to households to move their heating.

I think it's, it's obviously really challenging. You've got the early adopter people who are doing it anyway. I think you've got to do something around electricity and gas pricing to really push the next tranche of people.

Rob Gilbert: It's a fascinating time, I think, for the industry, isn't it? 

 In terms of if you look at , where we've come even the last 10 years, it does feel we've been on that sort of accelerated journey of the convergence of all these different technologies.

THE ROLE OF OFFSHORE WIND

We're here at the Global Offshore Wind Conference. We've talked a bit , about your role as the UK's offshore wind champion.

What do you see the role of wind being in this? How do you think we're doing? It feels pretty buzzy around Manchester today. Do you feel like we've turned a corner ?

Tim Pick: Well, look, .. the Manchester edition of Global Offshore Wind has a hugely special place in my heart for two reasons.

First and foremost, my older daughter is at university here, so it gives me a chance to take her and her flatmates out for dinner, which we did last night. But secondly and this may sound quite crude, but this is the conference where I effectively lost my offshore wind virginity. So if we wind back to the 2022 edition of Global Offshore Wind in Manchester, I was appointed by Boris Johnson and Kwasi Kwarteng in May 2022.

I had a dinner with Danielle Lane, now RWE, who was the, OIC industry chair at the time, and Dan McGrail, your current boss. And they were the only two senior offshore wind people I'd met until I then arrived at Global Offshore Wind in Manchester and went, "Wow." And it was an absolutely mind-blowing experience of just two days on my feet chatting, getting to know people.

I come back here now for the third time. It's like family. Some would say a slightly dysfunctional family at some ti- at some points, but it's, yeah, it's wonderful. I absolutely love it. And I think you're absolutely right, the buzz and, you know, Manchester's small enough where you bring 5,000 professionals from a certain industry into the center of it, and you walk around in the evening or this morning, you just bump into people you know, people who know you, and you have those chats on the edge of the conference, which are almost as important as the conference itself.

Look, I think the UK, we've had a bit of a sort of depression in offshore wind for a couple of years. You know, we had our AR5 disaster where the pricing was just wrong for developers and obviously a lesson was learned there. AR6 was okay, but we had a big cancellation and around half the capacity was effectively canceled.

So AR7, has really, put us on the front foot again. Some of the innovations in there were interesting. So, we had pre-DCO projects bidding. Some controversy over that.

The rounding of budgets I think was a really important step and really welcome. And then of course, and I guess SSE will laugh at this, Scottish price clearing lower than English price. No one would've guessed that

but I think, one thing I would remind people is AR7 is just an allocation round. We now have to get those projects to FID. I remember the effort that was made by all stakeholders around the AR4 projects while I was offshore wind champion to shepherd them through to FID.

And if you look at the AR7 projects, they've got to contend with ongoing connections queue reform , which has not been straightforward. we need to solve this ongoing drama around wind wakes in the industry.

Somebody needs to get a grip of that, and we need to have a sustainable standard form way of dealing with that at the pre-planning stage, so we avoid these kind of civil wars going on in the planning system. And then, If I take a step back and look at where we are as an industry we need to get our costs under control again.

Some of that is outside our control. We've got global cost of capital, global commodity prices. But we can push innovation, we can push competition and we need to start seeing that. And that ties in with the sort of, public perception of the industry and the PR side of this, and we need to get back on the front foot on that.

Rob Gilbert: I agree, particularly on that point on cost because it does feel like there's a public perception problem. But I do wonder whether one of the ways we do that is to face into the value part of that equation too because you and I have both argued for more UK content in the energy transition and in the offshore wind sector.

And I think if we look at sort of public consensus, actually it's really important that we get everybody to understand the value that can be delivered from the energy transition, not just in terms of electricity but also in terms of industry

because actually the data shows people generally are still very supportive of the energy transition, but clearly it is becoming much more politically polarized. . 

CAPTURING UK INDUSTRIAL VALUE

You chair OWGP.

It is now the organization that's been tasked with delivering the industrial growth plan. That is a plan for the offshore wind industry to deliver more of that UK content and potential. The number I think was £29 billion of potential that's identified for for the offshore wind sector to land in the UK.

Sitting here today, do you think we're unlocking it? Do you think we need to do more?

Tim Pick: W-we definitely do need to do more. I think there's a new report out today which talks about us being at the sort of 38% level. I haven't looked at the underlying measurement for that and there are different ways of measuring content especially when you get into things like O&M services and how many years you count in your in your content calculation.

I think if you take a layman's view, people would often think of local content as the capital equipment that goes into the project, the stuff that's manufactured. And there definitely, there's scope to do more. In a, in a rigorous way and, you know, going back to the champion report that I published in 2023 I had this phrase a, a sober and thorough make or buy analysis.

And, I think we have to accept that there are things that it's just uncompetitive to make in the UK and we should import those. But there are definitely plenty of things in this space where we can compete where we're not importing them for lo- from low-cost jurisdictions, we're importing them from our neighbors in Europe, for example.

So I think there's plenty of space. As you can imagine the OWGP is extremely close to my heart as the chair for the last three years, and especially through a time of pretty profound change for the organization. We're going through a process of taking on that responsibility for the Industrial Growth Plan taking on more funding from developers and therefore hopefully having more impact in the supply chain.

I mean, if, you know, we should be having more impact. You come to these conferences and you hear this word collaboration a lot, it's very hard for developers to collaborate because obviously they're competing. They're competing for seabed leases. They're competing for CFDs. They're competing for the supply chain.

We provide a vehicle where, they hand over some money to us, and we provide that collaborative solution to supply chain development. And I hope they're really proud of that. We're a sort of safe space, a level playing field in which they can just they can provide that contribution.

They can be involved in a certain way but without worrying about competition, between each other. And I guess the last point I would make is I talked in my report about people needing to, exhibit the sort of character of stewardship, and I think our organization at OWGP, that's exactly what we try and instill in the organization.

So stewardship of the IGP, it's often stewardship of the money we're entrusted with

Rob Gilbert: I think you do a great job. And I think that concept of an organization that is delivering for the industry that is funding it, is something that is a great role model for lots of other sectors within the kind of UK industrial landscape.

CAN THE UK 'DO' INDUSTRY ANYMORE?

I suppose one question within that, this podcast is about, 

you know, 

the de-industrialization journey that we've been on for the last 40 or so years. Do you think we actually know how to do industry anymore? Because that's often something that's leveled at the UK.

It's like, "Oh, you know, we can't capture this value because we don't know how to do this anymore. We're better off to import it because other people know how to do it cheaper, better, faster." Do you have confidence that we can seize the industrial value from the, offshore wind market?

Tim Pick: I do, but as I said, in, i- in a sort of intelligent, targeted way.

A- and look, we are in a country which does still do lots of advanced manufacturing. So you only have to look at automotive or aerospace for great examples of industries where the UK is world-leading. Defense, I think, is similar. I don't kn- know s- quite so much about it. So the... We haven't lost the ability to manufacture things w- but we have to play to our strengths and to where we can be globally competitive.

I think in some of this heavy industry, there is an argument to partner with countries that still do that at scale. So if you look at the recent partnership with Japan or, work people do with South Korean companies or Chinese companies those countries still do heavy engineering, heavy manufacturing at scale and maybe are more on the sort of leading edge of how you do that.

And there's no harm in joint ventures or technology transfer back to the UK. We shouldn't always think of ourselves as a technology e- exporter.

Rob Gilbert: You're right, and 

I think 

Rob Gilbert: we see that already with, the South Korean and Japanese businesses are good case studies.

We have Sumitomo building a cable fabricator in the northeast of Scotland. We've got, 

uh, 

Seawind building a monopile, 

you know, 

Facility, in, on, on Teesside.

THE ROLE OF ENABLING PORTS

Within that, we talk a lot as well about enabling infrastructure and actually being able to create the places for industry to be successful in this country. One of the areas that we've been, probably more ineffective than we would ideally like to be is, in port infrastructure.

So is in really delivering the platforms, the places for these industries to be built. And there's lots of different reasons why that is and not lambasting port operators because they're commercial. They have, their commercial interests at heart, and they rightly should do.

Do you think we need to be doing more? How do we move faster? What do we need to do with ports?

Tim Pick: . Look, I th- I think it's, it's become clear to me since writing that report that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to the port question.

And you know, I had, reached a conclusion at that time that it needed a more interventionist approach and particularly some sort of backstop on demand because you are asking ports to invest ahead of the opportunity. Now it's interesting that somewhere like Ardyssir has completely disproved my thesis.

So you have a private sector port which has just gone ahead and built an enormous platform for this industry to use. And 

actually

that's a fantastic example of somebody who has seen the potential of UK and European offshore wind and decided to go for it with a very significant investment.

And I think it's incumbent on all of us to ensure that that is a success a- and to ensure that they get the tenants and the manufacturing base, that they deserve for making that investment. W- we see similar more modest scale investments in other ports in Cromarty Firth like Nigg, and we see them in the northeast.

Obviously, you've got the big Teesworks development where Seir have gone in a completely different setup as well. The one area where I think this is really challenging is the Celtic Sea. I've had a lot of involvement with that, both in my previous role as champion through the Offshore Wind Acceleration Task Force, but then through a, Welsh Government task and finish group as well.

And that's extremely challenging. There isn't a legacy industry to build on there. So you're genuinely taking quite a big bet on a capital project for future floating offshore wind, which again is, under development and, potentially moving to the right a little bit. And there I think the thesis still holds.

There needs to be a little bit more backstopping of that market risk. And that can come in many forms. You know, these ports are not just built for offshore wind. And if you look at the ports we use today, they were built in Victorian England where offshore wind wasn't even a thing, and we're using them for all sorts of different things.

So the... you know, ports I've been fascinated by since I was a kid.

I was a geography A level student, did a huge amount of project work on ports and the hinterland of ports and the economic environment around them. And, um I'm absolutely convinced that, we need to do more. We need to make more of what we've already got.

WHY INDUSTRY MATTERS - THE CASE FOR ENERGY INDUSTRIAL VALUE

Rob Gilbert: It's a fascinating one, isn't it? I didn't know that you were such a keen advocate of ports from such a young age. But it explains a lot, I think, in terms of that kind of commitment to trying to find ways to support these places.

You and I've spoken many times about this sense that the offshore wind sector is a really great vehicle for delivering, genuine economic change in parts of the country that have been long left behind by the de-industrialization piece.

And you talk to Ardyss here as a case study of the potential for the future. I live in Northumberland the nearest port to me is the Port of Blyth, and I often get accused of being a bit biased in favor of Blyth, for its proximity.

But I think it's just such a good case study of what the energy transition, when it's done properly and in a considered fashion, can do for an area. Blyth, Is a port that effectively missed the oil and gas transition.

It was still a coal port. And they've gone hard into the renewable sector. They now have 600 people working on that port, and there's 55 businesses employing those people, and all of that is about the sort of verticality and the clustering that comes when you bring the energy in- industry into a place.

And so I think that place-based, very focused investment, definitely agree, is something that we just have to make more of because that then spills into the community. We just haven't quite cracked that Rubicon moment where we look around the coast of the United Kingdom and see all of these clusters emerging.

And I would agree wholeheartedly with you on the Celtic Sea, 'cause I think that is the next real test for our industry, actually, in terms of c- can we go ahead of the demand? Do we have commitment to the technology?

Tim Pick: I think we're maybe a bit impatient on this stuff, and rightly so.

But there are some fantastic clusters emerging. You talked about the northeast, and it's not just Blyth. And, you know, there's always this argument, where does the northeast end and, the east or whatever begin? Um, but there are some great clusters and clusters of activity around the Humber.

And it's not just ports. Some of these large factories anchor interesting clusters as well. I spent some time recently at a factory in Lee-on-the-Solent and I hadn't quite appreciated the little cluster they've got there. But you had the Vestas onshore wind turbine blade factory on the Isle of Wight, and now you've got the large structures innovation center run by high value manufacturing catapult as well.

And 

these anchor projects, whether it's a port or a large factory just spin off so many other opportunities. And I'm really positive about you meet people in this space who are just so innovative and 

british people just have that desire to make stuff and tinker with stuff, and lo and behold, they create a business.

This gets me out of bed in the morning. I think it's fantastic. And when we see our grant calls at OWGP, there are so many businesses desperate to do more, to be more innovative, to be more productive, more competitive. And it's fantastic to be able to give them a leg up.

And going to your point on geography it-- look, it's really interesting when you look at the, um, the, the changes that were made to the CFD around clean industry bonus were some of those were tied to a designation by postcode of deprived areas. And when you put that on a map, it's really stark.

A lot of that overlaps beautifully with what we're trying to do with offshore wind. That is really powerful,

it really brings home that need to reinvigorate those communities.

POLICY INTERVENTION - WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?

Rob Gilbert: That sort of brings on, onto some of the policy or intervention.

'Cause we talk about, the AWGP is an industry funded entity. You're set up effectively to provide this capital support into businesses into manufacturing. Create these opportunities, as you say, to support this kind of British engineering and give these organizations a leg up.

We operate in a really regulated market. We have structured auction rounds. The transmission is all dealt with through regulated processes. And there's this kinda sense of needing to play by the rules and needing to be a good global citizen.

But it feels like we often get accused of being possibly a bit too laissez-faire with our trade.

 You're a lawyer by trade, and you've sat on, every side of this equation, through your career. Do you think there are levers that we're still not pulling?

Tim Pick: Wow. I mean, that is a huge topic, and, and somebody wrote a report on this subject in 2023. I mean, look, people are well aware of my criticisms of the CFD and how if you're in the supply chain or you're in a port It's almost like looking at the opportunity through a bathroom window.

It's slightly opaque. It's a bit fuzzy. And the CFD is doing that to people. Now, there's been lots and lots of thinking about what's the alternative, and obviously in the UK, we've been through feed-in tariffs, we've been through certificate-based systems. I-it... the CFD is so far the best we've come up with, and obviously there have been some modifications to that to try and help the supply chain.

The first round of that has just gone through with the Clean Industry Bonus for AR7, and we'll see if that delivers some better outcomes. And if not, we should be prepared to keep looking at it. And look on the other side of the equation, as a consumer, you want cheap electricity, as cheap as you can get it.

Of course, you want people to have jobs and you want industry in the UK, but you also are quite selfish about your electricity bill, and so we need to bear in mind that, who is ultimately paying for all of these nice things we'd like to have. So there's a really interesting balance there. I-in terms of the current system.

My wish list, I mean, I have a huge wish list on this stuff, but two things I would like to see get a bit more attention. I still think we need this sort of longer term forecast around both leasing and CFD rounds and the level of ambition.

This comes up a lot, at the moment w-we're all still guessing what the budget and administrative strike price will be for AR8, and what capacity the government will want to procure. We have some idea from the Clean Power Action Plan, but then we have no idea for AR9 or AR10.

And then the other thing I find really interesting is As we move into 2030s, we're gonna see increasing levels of projects coming to the end of their life. And so you've got this decommissioning or repowering activity. And if you think about into the 2030s and let's say we get to a sort of North Sea basin of 100 gigawatts of assets with a roughly 25-year life, you're starting to see th-three, four gigawatts every year of activity just to keep standing still.

And I think people are starting to understand that this industry at some point becomes rather self-sustaining at a certain level, and we need to ensure that our policy frameworks are supporting that activity.

Is there a, perhaps an accelerated way through the planning system because they already exist? The grid connection is already there, but it's tied up in this OFTO, and the OFTO policy around repowering or decommissioning needs to move in lockstep with the offshore wind. So, yeah, look, I think it's fascinating when you wind the clock forward to the mid-2030s.

Rob Gilbert: Yeah it's really fascinating. We could do a whole episode on repowering. I spend a lot of time talking to a lot of interesting businesses at the moment about repowering. I agree with you. I think the self-sustaining element of it is particularly interesting because we do have to have that ability to repower these assets to, replace components to do those things just to stand still with power generation.

If we don't do that, then we'll find ourselves in a situation where we are, effectively going backwards in our electricity availability, which definitely is not where we want to be.

But actually, I think what is really appealing about the repowering opportunity is to your earlier point about British, desire to tinker and engineer and, that is a real tinkering and engineering challenge. It's not necessarily wholesale replacement of assets. It's how do you get the most life out of a gearbox, or how do you take a component and, innovate putting a leading edge on a blade again or doing something that means that you don't end up having to replace all of this kit.

Probably a couple of kind of final things.

THE POLITICISATION OF THE ENERGY TRANSITION

 As we sort of alluded to earlier on, the consensus around the energy transition, the particularly political language around, things like net zero has become quite a lot more polarized and as I said, I think is, not necessarily representative of the views of the public in entirety because we certainly see from the data that people are still very supportive.

But how much does that worry you? How much does that fragmentation of consensus, that breakdown of people being committed concern you?

Tim Pick: Look, this discussion happens a lot in the sidelines of these conferences. But look, I don't like the politicization of...

And let's talk about offshore wind rather than the wider net zero thing. I don't like it in terms of the impact on individual people. So let's say I'm a trainee wind turbine technician in Grimsby. I don't want to read about this sort of... This breakdown scares me because am I going into a career that's gonna be sustainable?

And so the politicization of it when it affects individual people and their livelihoods and their concerns about their jobs, I find really um- distasteful. And I don't think we should be worrying people for one clear reason, which is that whatever flavor of government we have next they will inherit an electricity system in the UK which has an enormous amount of offshore wind and a lot of jobs attached to that.

And you can't just shut that down. And so the fact is you will have to live with that. And yes, you may not want too much more of it. You might slow down CFD auctions. You might put less budget. You might require people to take more merchant risk. But fundamentally, the assets will be there, and you can't switch them off.

And so those jobs for those young people will exist, and I find it quite tragic that you might be sort of scaring them in that way. I think it's also fair to say that the job of opposition in government is to oppose the government and force the government to make its argument and to win its argument.

And we live in a democracy, and I totally believe that's right.

Rob Gilbert: I'd agree wholeheartedly. I think It's critical that we provide stability.

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2027

But also, as you say, it is one of those things where you inherit that system, don't you? And I think whilst we can get a bit doom and gloom about it there is also a lot of reason for positivity, reason for hope, reason for optimism, and if we come onto that as a sort of closing sentiment maybe for this episode. Let's fast-forward to Global Offshore Wind 2027.

I suspect not back here in Manchester, probably back in London, but uh, or indeed somewhere else. But what is your... What do you hope? A year out from now, what do you hope's happened? Where do you hope we are as an industry?

Tim Pick: Oh, gosh. I'll g- I'll reel off a few, but there's, there's lots and lots at play here.

So close to home on the OWGP stage we will be iterating the Industrial Growth Plan in 2027. It's already a couple of years old. Life moves on. The conclusions that were reached then I don't think will be radically different, but definitely there have been some changes, and it's time we updated it.

And today we've seen the launch of the Wind Innovation Hub, which is also tied to those priority areas. So it's important that that stays current. IGP iteration, very exciting. Lots of consultation with industry around that. We will have awarded our first round of Industrial Growth Fund grants, and hopefully those projects will be underway and getting built, and people will be seeing value from the OWGP program in, in a different way to what they've seen before in a larger scale way.

Sticking with the supply chain obviously I would love to see that Vestas nacelle factory making meaningful progress. You know, let's hope it's found a site, started to put its funding package together, started to put a construction package together. You know, nacelle factory in this country there have been...

It's interesting, uh, over the last few years, people have had different views. Is it is it that great a development? Should we absolutely have one because we're a massive offshore wind market? I'm definitely on the, on the we should have one, and we should ensure that our SMEs get the maximum possible opportunity to sell their kit into it and create that cluster.

Just as I talked about the Vestas blade factory, the Isle of Wight Solent cluster, the cluster around this nacelle factory is gonna be super interesting to watch develop. And then two more things. You know, the Celtic Sea is extremely close to my heart. I've spent so much time on it. And I- we should hopefully be seeing some really big progress on Erebus.

I don't know their exact project timing, but I've always said I will be there the first day that a floater is towed into the Celtic Sea, and I absolutely will be there because that will just be an unbelievable sight to witness. And then finally, and this is the geeky end, but it's something that really concerns me because it's getting in the way of some of the more positive things in the industry.

We need to crack this wind wakes problem and find an industry-led standard solution to that. And in some ways it's a problem of success. We have a lot of offshore wind and therefore we're starting to get a lot of wakes. And if we can crack it here, other countries will follow. It's an opportunity for us to shine and to come up with something sensible and sustainable.

So, Yeah, that's five things. I'm sure there's a load more.

Rob Gilbert: It's a great list. I think, You will not be the only person who is stood on a quayside somewhere one day when the first floater is towed into the Celtic Sea. I suspect there'll be a crowd of people who will be very very happy to see that happen because as we talked about, it'll be the realization of that potential of that moment when the Celtic Sea achieves the opportunity that floating offshore wind will be for that region.

FUTURE GUESTS

I will ask one final question, which I'm gonna ask everybody that comes on this podcast. And that is, this podcast is about people building Britain, so not just the policies that make it, but the people who are actually doing the work and really driving industry forward in, in the UK.

So, who is your recommendation? Who should I be putting a mic in front of? Who's actually doing it?

Tim Pick: Y-You know, I'm gonna give you two recommendations. One, one, he won't mind me calling him this. He's an old-timer, Tony Quinn, ex-ORE Catapult. W-When I was offshore wind champion, we got started on this conversation with developers and industry about boosting the funding of OWGP and also wider government funding for the sector both for supply chain development and also for innovation.

And Tony sat there in the room and basically just said, "I won't let... I won't settle for anything less than £1 billion." Um, and you know something? Wind the clock forward and a combination of our program, the GB Energy program, Crown Estate program, and some of the things that are going on with government, you can pretty much get to £1 billion.

So, I think getting Tony on and asking him to talk about n-his career but also his hopes for the future and, and also a great perspective on clustering in the northeast would be great. And then the, the second person I'd get on is Lewis Gillies. Y-you think of the journey he's been on through Ardersier and now at Acora, so going from the port side to the offshore services side, creating these new businesses.

I think he'd have some great perspectives.

Rob Gilbert: Sounds like two guests I shall be tagging in this podcast to hopefully encourage to come on in future episodes.

Tim, thank you so much for coming on How We Build Britain. Thank you for giving us your perspective on the offshore wind market, the potential opportunities for industry in the UK

Thank you so much. 

Good therapy.