Crown estate wind project touts £1.4bn boost and new jobs

What guarantee do they give that folks in Port Talbot will get the jobs?

This has nothing to do with Wales, other than the cable will be attached to the grid near Pembroke in Milford Haven. The investor is French, the wind turbines are from Denmark, the site to developed is owned by the Crown estate in London, and the power generated will be transmitted on the existing 400Kv south Wales connector lines to Avonmouth. The 3000 jobs punt for Port Talbot is pure fantasy.

This was announced earlier in month and Jo Stevens made the comment it was good that the Crown Estate was not devolved so Labour UK can reap any benefits once Govts of Norway, France and Ireland get their cuts from their state owned energy companies who are developing the project, meanwhile GBE is twiddling it's thumbs.

I looked at Brychan's prescient analysis and it is right on the money. Well done! We continue to have a dialogue of the deaf in Wales, or is it more a monologue with the inhabitants of fantasy island? Grand schemes, telephone numbers, excited press releases. Wonderful, until someone looks carefully. Spoilsport.. The leader of Neath Port Talbot councils rejoices at the "local and regional supply chain." In fairness he is entirely correct, the supply chains in Denmark are buzzing; an easy commute for redundant steel workers. Jessica Hooper of the grandly named Renewable UK Cymru, no doubt dripping with excitement, tells us that there is a $4.8billion opportunity for Welsh businesses (which equates to about 6% of Welsh GDP) and - wow - 3,000 'well paid jobs.' The former is of course fantasy, and the latter, again correct, will be in Denmark. And I can't think of anything more beautiful and quiet than 'green' windmills. There won't be many, just enough to power..."millions" of homes.

Does anybody still not understand why the English government won't devolve the crown estate to us or why they won't allow us to gain independence, Wales is worth too much to them.

As pointed out, it is a massive shame UK companies aren't more involved in these developments. Equinor is 2/3 owned by the Norwegian government, so their profits from this wind farm will be used to invest in public services in Norway! But this is the consequence of not building long term expertise, supply chains, skills, ability to finance projects. You can't go from 0GW to building 4.5GW of offshore wind farms overnight and unfortunately the UK doesn't have the experience of developing such projects and now to catch up with these companies. Sorry to sound defeatist, but we should have got behind the technology as it was maturing. However, if we can't build them, having a foreign company do so on our behalf is the next best thing, as we still benefit from the lower energy costs than continued use of gas. Working with the foreign companies so a few jobs come our way is also good - Siemens for example makes turbine blades in Hull, employing around 1500 people. These aren't imaginary jobs! As the Celtic sea is much small generating capacity than North sea, based on those number, I imagine it'll be closer to 400-600 in manufacturing and another 300-500 in construction. Remember though, for each manufacturing-type job in the UK, around 1.8 jobs are supported indirectly elsewhere in the economy, so the 3000 is not a completely crazy number, though probably a bit on the optimistic side. It largely depends on if further projects further south west of the Bristol channel are achievable in the coming years