The three revenue lives of a wind farm

Every UK offshore wind farm earns in one of three ways, and over its life it may pass through more than one of them.

CfD-backed, the current model

New offshore wind is supported through a Contract for Difference, a fixed price for the power, for 15 years, with payments flowing both ways. The mechanism itself, including the years it paid money back to consumers, is explained properly on the costs page, and there is no need to repeat it here. What matters from the owner's side is what the fixed price does: it turns an unpredictable market revenue into a near-certain one, and that certainty is what the banks lend against. Offshore wind farms are financed with large amounts of debt, and lenders price that debt against the guaranteed revenue line. The CfD is not just support, it is the financing foundation of the entire current build programme. The most recent auction, Allocation Round 7, awarded contracts to 8.4 GW of fixed-bottom offshore wind at strike prices of £91.20/MWh in England and Wales and £89.49/MWh in Scotland (DESNZ AR7 results, 14 January 2026).

ROC legacy, the older fleet

The UK's first generation of offshore wind farms, roughly speaking everything built before 2017, earns differently. Under the Renewables Obligation, a farm sells its power at whatever the market price is, and earns tradeable certificates, ROCs, on top for every unit it generates (Ofgem). The shape is entirely different from a CfD: the farm is exposed to the market, with a certificate top-up rather than a fixed price. Around 5.6 GW of offshore capacity still earns this way, a figure compiled from the Ofgem RO register as of July 2026. The scheme closed to new entrants in 2017, each farm's support runs for 20 years from accreditation, and the scheme ends for everyone in March 2037 (Ofgem).

Merchant, the future for the legacy fleet

When support ends, the farm keeps generating and sells at the market price, whatever that turns out to be. This is merchant operation, and the UK's earliest offshore farms are already there. One detail matters more than any other: wind farms all generate at the same windy times, and when supply is abundant the price falls, so the price a wind farm actually achieves, its capture price, is usually below the average market price. A merchant wind farm is not just exposed to the market, it is exposed to the least favourable corner of it.

The support cliff

Here is the part of the story that rarely gets told. Support for a wind farm is temporary by design, and the end dates are already fixed. A farm accredited under the Renewables Obligation earns certificates for 20 years, and the whole scheme closes in March 2037 regardless (Ofgem). A CfD runs for 15 years from its start date, then stops (DESNZ). None of this is small print, it is the design, and it means the UK's offshore fleet rolls off support on a schedule that can be plotted today.

It has already started. The earliest UK offshore farms, accredited in the early 2000s, have reached the end of their RO support and now run merchant. Across the whole RO scheme, all technologies, around 5.1 GW of renewable capacity leaves support by 2027, a further 4.7 GW by 2031, and roughly 25 GW more by the scheme's close in 2037 (Energy UK, citing Ofgem and UCL analysis, April 2026). The offshore share of that, plotted below, builds through the early 2030s as the big mid-2010s farms and then the first CfD projects reach their end dates.

What merchant life means is best stated evenhandedly. Revenue falls, and becomes volatile. Some farms will run on profitably, wind is free and an operating farm's costs are comparatively low. Some will repower or extend their lives. Some may retire early if market revenue does not cover operating cost. This is not a crisis, it is the design working as intended, the support was a bridge and bridges end. But it is a real cliff, the dates are set, and the industry's next decade will be shaped by how it crosses.

Who owns offshore wind

Ask people who owns the UK's wind farms and most will guess energy companies. That is half right. Utilities and oil majors develop and build the farms, they hold the engineering skill and the appetite for construction risk. But once a farm is built and earning, its steady contracted income is exactly what long-term investors want, and the ownership register reads accordingly: pension funds, insurers, infrastructure funds and sovereign wealth funds sit alongside the developers on almost every major UK farm.

The mechanism has a name, the farm-down. A developer builds the project, takes the construction risk, then sells a stake, typically half, once the risk is behind it. The developer recycles the capital into its next project, the fund buys a de-risked operating asset with contracted income, both sides get what they came for. It is the standard model of the industry, not the exception.

The pension point deserves to be concrete. The Danish pension funds PFA and PKA bought half of the Walney Extension for around £2 billion in 2017. Norges Bank, which manages Norway's national pension fund, bought 37.5% of Race Bank in 2021. And the Universities Superannuation Scheme, the pension fund of UK university staff, joined the consortium buying into Hornsea 3 in 2025. If you have a workplace pension, there is a decent chance a slice of a wind farm is quietly working for you.

After support: what happens next

What follows the cliff is direction of travel, not forecast, and it is labelled as such. Three routes are already visible. Corporate PPAs, where a company contracts directly for a farm's output at an agreed price, rebuilding some revenue certainty from the private side. Repowering, where new and far larger turbines replace old ones on proven, consented, grid-connected sites. And life extension, running well-maintained farms beyond their design life where the economics hold. Government is also consulting on a fourth: a proposed Wholesale Contract for Difference would let existing generators voluntarily swap market exposure for a fixed price, a CfD-shaped bridge for the post-support fleet (Energy UK, April 2026). Whether it proceeds, and on what terms, is not yet decided.

The honest close to this section is simple. The industry built its first generation on support mechanisms, deliberately and in public. The test of the next decade is earning without them.

The full picture

A UK offshore wind farm earns contracted revenue for a fixed term, then meets the market. The support is real, temporary and two-way. The owners are energy companies, and pension funds, and sovereign wealth, in proportions that would surprise most people. None of this is hidden, and none of it needs to be. The full picture is more persuasive than the headline, in either direction, and the other half of this picture, what all of it costs, is on What Offshore Wind Actually Costs. The facts, in context, open to anyone who wants to look.