Updated: Lib Dems propose £400m boost to UK wind turbine manufacturing

The central role of environmental and energy issues at the forthcoming election was underlined today when Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg announced plans to bolster the UK's fledgling wind turbine manufacturing industry, branding it a "scandal" that UK wind farms were largely reliant on imported turbines.

Speaking at an event in Newcastle to launch the party's new Green Jobs Manifesto, Clegg said that a Lib Dem government would divert £400m of government spending to support seven projects to convert underused shipyards into offshore wind turbine plants.

"It's a scandal that 90 per cent of the £1.75bn contract for a wind farm off the coast of Kent is going to foreign contractors, with the turbines being manufactured in Germany," he said. "New offshore turbines, with blades the size of the London Eye, need to be built and launched from modern docks, so we need to upgrade our shipyards to take advantage of this massive opportunity… Expanding offshore wind will create jobs but unless we act now, these jobs won't be British jobs."

Under the proposed scheme, shipyards on the North and Irish Sea coasts such as those around Liverpool, Newcastle, Hull, Middlesbrough, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow would be able to bid for a share of the new fund.

A spokesman for the Party said that shipyard operators would be encouraged to form consortia with wind turbine manufacturers such as vestas, Siemens and GE to bid for the funding.

He added that any Lib Dem government could not force offshore wind farm developers to select UK manufactured turbines under competition rules, but argued that the upgrading of port facilities would attract renewable energy investors to the UK and ensure that turbines could be built at locations closer to the proposed wind farms.

The grants would also be supported by the formation of a new Renewables and Energy Efficiency Delivery Authority, modeled on the Olympics Delivery Authority, which will provide a further £100m for investment in new wind energy training and testing facilities.

The Lib Dems said that universities that specialise in engineering, such as Loughborough, Durham and Newcastle, would be in line for funding from the new authority.

The manifesto predicts that the plan will create 12,000 jobs in port development and a further 45,000 new jobs in the manufacturing, construction and supply chain of offshore wind energy, primarily in coastal cities that are suffering from high rates of unemployment.

The scheme could also help to lower some of the costs and risks associated with offshore wind farm projects while bolstering the UK's competitiveness.

"The technology we need is ready and the consortiums who have won the right to build offshore wind farms in the North and Irish Seas are now looking for manufacturers to build the turbines," the manifesto states. "If action is not taken now all the manufacturing jobs that these orders could create will go abroad where there are already the facilities to build huge wind turbines. Only if existing port facilities close to the off-shore wind farms of the North and Irish Seas are converted will the turbines be built here and the jobs created here too."

A spokesman for the Party said that new funding would form part of a proposed £3.6bn green stimulus package paid for with a range of reforms, including cuts in tax credits for higher earners, a reduction in the Highways Agency Major Improvements Budget and the introduction of a 10 per cent banking levy.