4C Offshore Empowering Intelligence

Jobs call for Rampion

4C Offshore | Lewis Holdsworth
By: Lewis Holdsworth 20/05/2015 GMB
GMB Call For Jobs Guarantees On £1.3 Billion Offshore Sussex Wind Farm Announced To Start Early Next Year. With construction in the run up for the 400MW project Rampion,  450 jobs will become avaliable for the South Coast of England.

GMB, the union for energy workers, commented on the announcement of a start date early next year for the £1.3 billion 400-megawatt Rampion wind farm eight miles off the Sussex coast consisting of 116 turbines.

Gary Smith, GMB National Secretary for energy, said “Unless Government insists on guarantees on local components sourcing and local jobs in return for higher bills that this energy will cost consumers I think we can safely say the turbines will be built in Germany and Denmark, brought over on Dutch barges, and in turn be connected by cables made in China.

We need guarantees on how many jobs this investment funded by consumers will create in the UK and locally in Sussex."

Gary Smith adds: "If Rampion is a rerun of Thames Array the danger that the only things communities paying for this project are higher energy bills.

Rampion must not be a rerun of Thames Array, one of the world’s largest wind farms. There the turbines and much of the Infrastructure was manufactured aboard and boats used to float the turbines into position were from the continent with a workforce also mainly from the continent.

If Government and the energy industry are serious about developing green jobs in the UK they will not allow this to happen again.

The money to fund green energy comes from the bills of UK consumers who have no choice in the matter. They have every right to expect that the government that decreed that they should pay for green energy has an industrial strategy in place to promote decent jobs for a new generation now facing prospects of precarious employment.

Government leaving the supply chain to corporations which decide to spend the money importing much of the technology from overseas is completely out of order and not acceptable.”


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