The UK government's announcement excluding offshore wind turbine produce MingYang from the UK market cited national security concerns. Would a nuanced approach be optimal?

Published: 27 May 2026
Author: Kiran Desai

The evolution of Europe’s response to concerns raised about the use of Huawei chips in European telecommunications infrastructures, from initial compromise to a shift to exclusion based on national security grounds, may offer lessons. In March this year the UK government, by fiat and on no formal legal basis, effectively excluded Chinese producer MingYang Smart Energy from supplying offshore wind turbines, resulting in the cancellation of what would have been the creation at Ardersier Port in Scotland of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturing facility. Noting concerns expressed by European wind turbine suppliers that the Chinese suppliers were offering lower-cost products and faster delivery, the first obvious consequence of a broader scoped exclusion of Chinese suppliers would be a rise in the cost of offshore wind turbine projects in Europe. Perhaps as regards the UK, the government has calculated that this is a cost it is prepared to fund. However, governments typically would want there to be a competitive market. There are three European offshore wind turbine suppliers who in aggregate are reported to hold about 90% of the European market. That suggests governments should seek to encourage smaller players to ensure the market is competitive.

In the absence of a harmonised approach, there is space for a government to learn lessons from the Huawei experience, with a government perhaps adopting a ‘critical’ (e.g., grid interface, control systems and remote access) metric where national security concerns arise, and a ‘non-critical’ metric (e.g., physical turbines and mechanical components) where Chinese suppliers would be able to compete. Such a risk-mitigation compromise would still allow subsequent exclusion if security concerns escalated. It would also provide a more managed and foreseeable investment climate.

The UK’s MingYang decision aligns positively with emerging COP priorities around energy security, supply chain resilience and domestic industrial strategy, but sits uneasily with core climate objectives of rapid renewable deployment, cost reduction and open global markets. In practice, it reflects a broader shift in climate policy from “fastest and cheapest decarbonisation” toward “secure and geopolitically resilient decarbonisation”—a trade-off that is likely to be central to the COP31 meeting in November this year and discussed at London Climate Week in June.