22 October 2008 - UK government announced yesterday that Britain has overtaken Denmark to become the world's number one in producing electricity from wind farms built offshore.

According to Mike O'Brien, the minister of state at the new Department of Energy and Climate Change, this achievement was made with the completion of the building work at Centrica's Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms near the coat off Skegness, Lincolshire.

The new offshore wind farms raise the total electricity generated from offshore wind in the UK to over 597 MW, enough to power 300 000 homes says the government.

Denmark currently has an offshore wind installed capacity of 423 MW.

This follows the Prime Minister's announcement yesterday morning at the British Wind Energy Association's conference that the UK now gets 3 GW of electricity from wind power.

Offshore wind makes up 20 per cent of that capacity.

"Offshore wind is hugely important to help realize the government's ambition to dramatically increase the amount of energy from renewable sources…. There are already five more offshore wind farms under construction that will add a further 938 MW to our total by the end of next year," said O'Brien.

And added, "We are also assessing plans to increase the total by a massive 25 GW in the future. That's enough electricity for every home in the country."

O'Brien also announced that consent has been granted to Centrica to build the 250 MW Lincs offshore wind farm.