Offshore Wind Energy: A vision for the future

Event Brief: Offshore Wind in Northern Europe has, to date, been a tremendous success surpassing most commercial and technical expectations. The success has buoyed investor confidence and led to ambitious targets, including a detailed Sector Deal with the UK Government committed to 40 Gigawatts of electric power with 60% local content by 2030 representing a major component of UK strategic electricity policy.  Professor Brennan, will speak on the topic of offshore wind, explaining how it has developed over the past 20 years and exploring what the future may hold.

Speaker Profile: Feargal Brennan is the James Blyth Professor of Offshore Engineering and Head of the Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering Department at the University of Strathclyde and Director of the University Offshore Engineering Institute.  He is a world-leading expert in resilience engineering and structural integrity particularly applied to ship and offshore structures.  His research is of global significance and is at the forefront of offshore engineering shaping the policies and work of major international organisations.  Prior to joining Strathclyde he was Director of Energy & Power at Cranfield University.  His engineering research has been in the main funded through industry (e.g. Centrica, RWE, Statoil, Siemens Gamesa, Dong Energy, E.on, EDF amongst others).  Professor Brennan has published widely and in addition to over 200 publications in learned engineering journals and conferences, he has authored a number of reports for the UK HSE, he was Editor of the Wiley International Journal “Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures” from 2005-2012 and coedited a book concerning offshore structures and oil and gas engineering (ISBN 0 947817 78 6) and more recently “Energy in Africa: Policy, Management and Sustainability” (ISBN: 978 3 319 91301 8).   Professor Brennan is the Director and Principal Investigator of the Renewable Energy Marine Structures Doctoral Training Centre involving the University of Strathclyde, Cranfield University and the University of Oxford and is Research Director of the Wind & Marine Systems and Structures (WAMSS) Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Strathclyde; He was the only member of both the EPSRC flagship Supergen Marine and Supergen Wind hubs and is now Offshore Wind Champion for the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy.  Professor Brennan has and continues to act as an advisor to Government and research assessment agencies world-wide.  He sat on the DECC MEAD (Marine Energy Array Demonstrator) Advisory Panel, is a member of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult Research Advisory Board, SOWEC (The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council), the Institution of Mechanical Engineering Offshore Engineering Committee, the British Standards Institution, International Evaluator for the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR), an EPSRC peer review college member since 2001 and served on a number of its programme panels.  He is the UK standing member and leader of the UK delegation to the ISSC (International Ship and Offshore Structures Congress) and has served as expert witness in the London Court of International Arbitration.