© Michael Behr/DCT Media The UK offshore wind supply chain received a major boost as the Crown Estate announced a £400 million investment, while GB Energy added its own £300m public-private deal to the total.
Speaking at Global Offshore Wind 2025 in London, Secretary of State Ed Miliband said: “We’re announcing a truly historic partnership between public and private investment, hundreds of millions of public funding from GB Energy crowding in many hundreds of millions more from the offshore wind industry and the Crown Estate.
“That enables us today to announce a total £1 billion of supply chain funding to bring offshore wind jobs to Britain.”
This figure includes the £300m previously announced by GB Energy in April, which provided the public investment to bring in the fresh private sector funding.
This matching funding comes from the offshore wind industry through the UK’s industrial growth plan to deliver new investments into supply chains such as advanced turbine technologies and foundations and substructures.
“We calculate that every pound of funding that we’ve provided could unlock £17 of private investment,” Miliband added.
Also speaking at Global Offshore Wind, GB Energy chairman Juergen Maier said that “we want to make sure we do a better job at making sure there is local manufacturing and jobs created locally.
“We want to deploy quite a bit of the money that was allocated to GB Energy, quite a significant amount of money in that area.”
Offshore wind supply chain
The Crown Estate’s £400m investment is intended to support new infrastructure, including ports, supply chain manufacturing and research and testing facilities.
It will be made available through two programmes targeted at the UK’s offshore wind supply chain – a £350m supply chain investment programme to invest in building new port and supply chain infrastructure, and a £50m supply chain accelerator for early-stage project development.
The latter is currently running its second funding round, having awarded nearly £5m to 13 organisations in December 2024.
The second round is seeking to award up to £15m and has an expanded scope to include UK ports and port-related infrastructure.
The body’s Powering Offshore Wind publication outlines the group’s plans for the investments, focusing on building new infrastructure, including ports, supply chain manufacturing, and research and testing facilities, to enable the deployment of offshore wind across the UK.
According to the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, the investment will benefit workers across Teesside, Scotland, South Wales and East Anglia, and support thousands of additional jobs across construction and maintenance.
Insufficient supply chain capacity is recognised as a key constraint to further offshore wind deployment.
Crown Estate managing director for marine Gus Jaspert warned: “What we’re seeing is the risk that the UK has a huge pipeline of projects, a huge future out to 2030 and 2050, but that we don’t have a supply chain that can keep pace.”
Investing in and building this enabling infrastructure will allow the UK to drive forward its clean energy transition and create growth opportunities within local communities.
