David Lloyd George would no doubt have approved of the collaboration agreement signed this month by Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, and Linda Taylor, the leader of Cornwall council. In 1910, Britain’s only Welsh prime minister told a Falmouth crowd that Wales and Cornwall shared “the same Celtic passion for liberty”. These days, they also share common challenges and – in the field of renewable energy – transformative new prospects.
Later this year, a bidding process will begin for leases to build enough floating windfarms in the Celtic Sea to power 3m homes by 2035. Longer term, the hope is to generate six times that output from an area off the north Cornwall and south Wales coasts. Investment in wind has hitherto focused on the North Sea, exploiting existing infrastructure associated with oil and gas. But developments in offshore technologies have dramatically expanded the economic horizon at Europe’s western edge. As Mr Drakeford put it in a joint press conference with Ms Taylor: “Where our geography has been against us in many ways for economic development, now suddenly being on the edge is an advantage in terms of wind and marine energy.”
