In a significant milestone, the UK has overtaken Denmark to become the world leader for offshore wind energy. The UK now leads the world in generating electricity from offshore wind farms as it completed the construction of a farm near the coast off Skegness, Lincolnshire.

The new farm, built by the energy company Centrica, will produce enough power for 130,000 homes, raising the total electricity generated from offshore wind in the UK to 590 megawatts (MW), enough for 300,000 UK homes.

As per the information available, the completion of 194MW of turbines at Lynn and Inner Dowsing means that the UK has overtaken Denmark, which has 423MW of offshore wind turbines.

"It is the coming of age of the renewables industry," Gordon Brown said. "We have known for a long time that Britain has the best wind and wave resources in Europe. Over the next 12 years, the North Sea will become to offshore wind what the Gulf of Arabia is to oil production."

"Offshore wind is hugely important to help realise the government's ambition to dramatically increase the amount of energy from renewable sources. Overtaking Denmark is just the start," said Mike O'Brien, a minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. "There are already five more offshore windfarms under construction that will add a further 938MW to our total by the end of next year."

 But a lot still needs to be done. Recently, O'Brien said that the current regulatory regime, headed by Ofgem, is limiting the national grid and wind energy companies investing to upgrade the network. He also declared that "we need investment in our grid infrastructure to reinforce and expand the existing grid network - both onshore and offshore"

Stating that the wind industry is "ready for take-off", O'Brien added that energy infrastructure investment could help lift the economy out of its current downturn. "We need to do what we can to bring forward energy projects to stimulate the economy" he said.