UK would be wise to rein in Chinese wind farms

Specifically, I highlighted plans by Mingyang, China’s largest offshore wind turbine manufacturer, to set up a factory in Scotland that would be its first outside China.

Since then the topic has been raised by MPs in Westminster and sparked a vigorous industry debate about whether China should be involved in the UK’s critical energy infrastructure.

Ed Miliband is in Beijing this weekend on the first visit to China by a UK energy secretary since 2017. His talks with Chinese ministers aim to refresh an outdated 10-year old "clean energy partnership", providing clarity on areas where the UK "can securely collaborate with China on areas of mutual benefit", the UK government says.

Mingyang’s factory would supply the blades sold with the company’s turbines to developers owning the rights to build 20 wind farms in the vast ScotWind project, as well as to developers of 12 others under a separate project to decarbonise oil rigs known as INTOG.

Three concerns have been raised. The first is the possibility that turbines could be manipulated by Beijing given that the operational software in a turbine remains in the control of the manufacturer after it has been installed. To anyone who thinks this is far-fetched, look at China’s record on economic coercion.

The second is dependency. All of INTOG and over 60 per cent of ScotWind is for floating – as opposed to fixed-bottom – wind farms in deep waters. Mingyang specialises in floating turbines. The only other manufacturers in the game, Vestas and Siemens-Gamesa, are too financially constrained to develop floating turbines at scale any time soon. They are also too busy fulfilling existing orders for fixed-bottom projects.

The third issue is trade. The EU is in the midst of a preliminary antitrust investigation into Chinese wind turbine manufacturers. The Trump administration’s tariffs on China speak for themselves. Yet Britain has no equivalent. What are the implications of the UK being the outlier?

There is a way forward. China has a key role in helping to tackle climate change through the rollout of green technologies, where it has global dominance. As the Chatham House think-tank puts it: “China’s remarkable success in deploying clean technologies at speed and at scale could offer lessons for the UK as it seeks to rapidly expand the use of renewables”.

Mingyang’s turbines are also significantly cheaper than rivals’, which developers obviously like. One of the INTOG developers, Cerulean Winds, has already entered into a preliminary agreement with Mingyang for turbines. And there are green jobs to be created.

Mingyang has been earmarked for £30 million in Scottish Government support for its factory. But it is the UK government that will ultimately decide. If it’s determined that China shouldn’t be excluded from the UK supply chain, then Mingyang’s entry should be made conditional, including technical and legal guardrails. After all, with excess domestic manufacturing capacity, China needs European markets.

Yet the UK should go further. It should present the new template it has created for Chinese market entry to countries embarking on their own offshore wind programmes (France, notably).

By doing so, the UK sets a new paradigm for dealing with China’s renewables juggernaut, while seizing an opportunity for leadership in Europe.

Jeremy Grant is a freelance writer and former Financial Times journalist​