Offshore Wind Report 2025

Welcome to the 2025 Offshore Wind Report which covers the 25th anniversary year of the UK offshore wind sector and celebrates its incredible growth over the last two and a half decades. This year’s report is packed with examples of the value UK offshore wind now delivers for households, communities and the nation, and how it is powering ahead, thus writing the next chapter in this extraordinary story.

We’d like to take a moment to reflect on this remarkable milestone. In December 2000 the UK’s first offshore wind farm began to generate power from two 2MW turbines. 25 years later, the sector has become one of the UK’s greatest industrial success stories and a vital part of our country’s infrastructure. It is driving the UK’s clean energy transition, capable of producing enough power for 15.5 million homes, and hosts the biggest offshore wind development pipeline in Europe.

This achievement is not just about gigawatts and clean power. Built over decades, today's mature sector will play a critical long-term role in strengthening the UK’s energy security and resilience and realising huge social and economic opportunities. The energy independence it enables helps to mitigate the impact of fluctuating gas prices on households, while supporting new jobs, regional regeneration and economic growth across the UK for generations to come.

Getting to this remarkable milestone has been a team effort on a colossal scale, including governments, regulators, developers, investors, the supply chain, statutory stakeholders, communities and many more. Working in partnership, these pioneers have backed the technology, created a stable policy and regulatory framework, delivered an attractive Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, put nature at the heart of decision-making and created a system that is fit for delivering an energy transition at scale, whilst fostering innovation. When faced with challenges such as global volatility, economic uncertainty, rising prices and international competition, the whole sector has responded with commitment, ingenuity and resilience. This collective effort and pioneering spirit has made the UK an enticing home for offshore wind.

At The Crown Estate, we’re proud of the role we’ve played in this story. Taking a long-term view is part of our remit, thinking beyond market and political cycles and considering how our actions can benefit future generations. From the very beginning we’ve combined this with our independence and resources, to act as a catalyst for the sector. We’ve committed financial support for early projects, invested in technical innovations such as cost-reduction pathways, pioneered spatial analysis techniques to identify optimum sites for wind farm locations, and invested in supply chain development. These have contributed to the resilient processes and robust decision-making which have become a hallmark of UK offshore wind.

While it’s a timely moment to look back, we have our eyes fixed firmly on supporting the future growth of the sector. We continue to use our unique status to bring a wide range of stakeholders into the conversation about the sector’s long-term growth and explore how sectors can co-exist in the busy marine space. This is brought to life through broad collaboration to develop The Crown Estate's Marine Delivery Routemap, a pioneering digital platform to model and map potential use scenarios for the seabed and coastline over the coming decades. This represents a fundamental shift in our ability to analyse, visualise and engage with partners about future sea uses.

Our commitment to bring parties together to unlock future growth can also be seen in our work with the Offshore Wind and Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage Co-location Forum, and our collaboration with the Fishing Liaison with Offshore Wind and Wet Renewables group (FLOWW) to publish a best practice guide for engagement between fishing and offshore renewables. Both are examples of the power of working together to drive positive outcomes for all.

We are using our new investment powers conferred by the Crown Estate Act 2025 to boost the impact we can have. This includes our ambition to invest up to £400 million to build supply chain capability and infrastructure, with 28 projects across the UK already receiving funding, from ports to manufacturing, testing, recycling and education facilities.

The recent announcement of Offshore Wind Leasing Round 6, expected to launch formally in the first half of 2027, demonstrates our commitment to maintaining a clear line of visibility for those investing in the UK market.

This report includes many more examples of how the sector, policymakers and key stakeholders are working together strategically to put the UK on an enviable footing for the next 25 years and beyond.

2025 highlights include: 

• The UK Government’s Allocation Round 7, which culminated in a record 8.4GW of capacity securing CfDs, making it Europe’s biggest ever offshore wind auction and signalling a vote of confidence in the UK offshore wind market

• The successful award of seabed rights to world-leading developers for 4.5GW of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea, marking a major milestone in Leasing Round 5 and underlining the UK's position as the leading market for innovative floating offshore wind in Europe

• The announcement of £1 billion of public investment, including our own £400 million commitment, to support supply chain growth and the delivery of the Industrial Growth Plan

Recent global volatility has reinforced the critical importance of a domestic renewables sector both now and in the future. These activities, and many more in this report, give us good reason to be optimistic about the contribution UK offshore wind can and will make. Confidence is returning, momentum is building and the sector is more collaborative and more coordinated than at any time in its history. As we look ahead, it is vital that we continue in this vein, working together to send a clear signal that the UK is open for business.

This report would not be possible without the insight and analysis of many of our colleagues and numerous partners and organisations. In particular, Crown Estate Scotland have provided an update on their portfolio of projects which is making great progress with consents determined, leases entered and CfDs secured. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and to all the pioneers across the sector, supply chain, governments, regulators and stakeholders who have helped build this sector into the incredible success story we see today.

Enjoy reading this snapshot of 2025 and here’s to a sector gearing up to approach the next 25 years with the same ambition and pace as the last.

Gus Jaspert, CMG Managing Director, Marine

Julia Rose, Head of Offshore Wind