Governments considering offshore wind often focus on generation targets, investment requirements and project pipelines. The more fundamental, but rarely asked, question is: how many people are needed across government to deliver offshore wind?
Research undertaken by BVGA looking at established markets suggests that a mature GW-scale offshore wind sector requires 140 to 230 full-time equivalent employees spread across government departments, regulators and associated agencies.
These resources are not concentrated in a single organisation. Offshore wind requires coordinated activity across leasing, permitting, grid connection, revenue-support frameworks and beyond. Each creates a significant regulatory workload and roles will be required for as long as there are offshore wind projects being developed in the country. Based on experience from established markets, indicative staffing requirements for a mature market are shown below.
At first glance these numbers may appear surprisingly high. However, the experience of established markets suggests that regulatory workload increases as the market matures. Policy development is only the beginning. Larger demands emerge once leasing rounds, permitting applications, grid connection requests and revenue-support mechanisms begin operating. At this point, mechanisms to fund government teams from the offshore wind industry (for example, through lease payments or auction fees) can be applied. This will be discussed further in our next blog.
Importantly, staffing requirements are driven not only by installed capacity, but also by the number of projects moving through the system. One large project a year may be easier to administer than several small ones. Such resourcing is often needed in permitting consultees, who start off knowing very little about offshore wind, and are given significant new topics to consider in addition to the busy jobs they had before. Staff having time to learn is key in enabling informed and fair decisions.
These findings are explored in BVGA’s report Government and Regulatory Authority Resourcing for Offshore Wind, which examines the scale of government resourcing associated with to successfully deliver offshore wind deployment in established markets, the implications for emerging offshore wind economies and how to address the challenge
