The Scottish Government and nine major European offshore wind developers have agreed to invest a total of £7.9m to Carbon Trust's Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) programme to bring new innovations to the renewables market.
The nine participating developers are Iberdrola, Statkraft, Statoil, Dong Energy, Vattenfall, SSE, EnBW, E.ON, and RWE.
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Through the collaborative research, development and demonstration (RD&D) programme, the partnership seeks to reduce the cost of offshore wind to less than £100 every megawatt hour (MWh) by 2020.
Of the £7.9m, the nine companies will invest at least £6.4m and the Scottish Government will invest £1.5m. The investment will be made by the companies and the government over a period of coming four years.
Development comes amidst recent doubts of the UK's ability to attract inward investment into renewables and to meet its EU 2020 renewables targets post-Brexit.
The new European phase of the programme is designed to influence the levelised cost of energy (LCoE) from offshore wind by improving efficiency, reducing costs, and increasing availability of existing and future offshore windfarms.
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By GlobalDataCarbon Trust's CEO Tom Delay said: "The Offshore Wind Accelerator has an impressive track record, providing an effective mechanism for public and private sector to work together to meet the cost reduction challenge head on.
"Its success lies in the sharing of the risks and rewards of innovation through industry-led collaborative research, development and deployment."
