The Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP) has launched a new Innovation Grant funding competition to try and boost offshore wind's supply chain priorities.

It puts £1m up for grabs for any successful supply chain companies who can develop new products and services for the offshore wind sector and grants between £25,000 and £200,000 are planned for projects that focus on future cables, electrical systems, next-generation installation, and operations and maintenance technologies.

A spokesman said: "The OWGP Innovation Grant will be supported by offshore wind industry champions Ocean Winds and ScottishPower Renewables who have expressed an interest in the innovation themes.

"The scope of the Innovation Grant call reflects the high growth areas within the Supply Chain Capability Analysis and the recently published Offshore Wind Industrial Growth Plan, which sets out how the UK can create thousands of jobs in offshore wind manufacturing and billions in economic value over the next decade."

The scheme is supported by Franco-Spanish offshore infrastructure developer Ocean Winds, which said: "Now more than ever, as we stand at the heart of the construction phase of 2GW of offshore wind in the United Kingdom and in France, innovation propels Ocean Winds to secure efficiency and safety in our journey to generating clean energy from offshore wind. This presents an excellent opportunity for us to champion innovation across the sector."

Begun in 2019, The Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP) is a long-term business transformation programme that has been established as part of the UK Offshore Wind Sector Deal. It promotes closer collaboration across the supply chain, implements structured productivity improvement programmes and facilitates shared growth opportunities between developers and the supply chain.

However, given the cost and logistics of operation, investment in offshore wind remains a contentious debate in the green energy sector, with a House of Commons report this January noting that renewable energy groups maintain that planning rules introduced in 2015 enforce a de facto ban on far cheaper and more quickly intergrated onshore wind projects.

The report added: "[The government] also changed the law in 2016 to require decisions on all onshore wind farms to be made by LPAs. This is different to the process for other infrastructure projects where decisions... are made by the Secretary of State."

The Labour Party has now adopted a stance that onshore wind projects should be treated no differently to other local infrastucture bids.

A 2022 report by Common Wealth, which looked at data from the Crown Estate (which owns the seabed around the UK) found that nearly half of the UK's offshore wind industry was owned by foreign states or majority state-owned foreign business. Denmark (20%) and Norway (9%) took the top stakes, while Sweden, Italy, France and China also were revealed as stakeholders.

Mathew Laurence, Director of Common Wealth, told Sky News: "Public ownership of renewable power is already widespread in the North Sea - it just benefits other countries."

He called for the creation of a UK energy green generator to roll out power more cleanly, faster, and more affordably.

Last autumn, a government auction for contracts for renewables invited bids for offshore wind contracts. None was received.

Dale Vince, owner of Ecotricity, which has produced 100% of its energy since 1996 from onshore turbines, said: "The reason is simple, the price has been driven too low. Developers are already walking away from contracts won in the last round - where offshore hit 'record' but clearly unsustainably low prices."

He added: "At the root of it is a Tory addiction to market solutions - right now it's resulting in no projects, but even when it does produce results, the benefits go to foreign owned companies. British taxpayers guarantee profit margins for foreign investors - it sucks value out of our economy. The proper alternative is to build in public ownership, keep the benefits here.

"Britain is the Saudi Arabia of wind (in that we have a lot of it) - and still the hapless Tory government can't get any built. Dogged adherence to a failed ideology is the reason - markets don't always know best."