The Crown Estate yesterday signalled its growing ambition to become a key player in Britain's booming offshore renewable energy industry by agreeing to buy a prototype of the world's largest wind turbine.

The estate, which manages land and assets owned by the Queen, said that it had agreed to buy the 7.5 megawatt Britannia turbine, specifically designed for offshore use, from Clipper Windpower.

The deal with Clipper represents a subtle shift in strategy by the Crown Estate, which owns the seabed around the UK and is thus set to benefit from a vast planned expansion of offshore wind power in Britain.

The Government wants to develop 33 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2020, up from about 0.6 gigawatts, representing a huge emerging commercial opportunity for the Crown Estate.

The group, which has full ownership of the seabed around the UK out to 12 nautical miles and lesser rights out to 200 miles, has been acting as the industry's landlord, charging offshore windfarm operators such as Centrica and E.ON an annual “rent” of just under 1 per cent of the value of the electricity generated.

The estate, which pays most of its revenues to the Treasury, signed its first offshore wind lease in 2001. It has since signed contracts worth tens of millions of pounds.

One industry expert estimated this year that, purely as a landlord, the Crown Estate stands to earn £100 million a year from offshore wind farms.

The Britannia turbine will be about 100m high with a maximum height from sea level to the tip of the blade of 175m - which is fractionally shorter than the Gherkin building in the City of London.

It is clear that the Crown Estate is keen to help to enable the industry to develop further and potentially as a co-developer of wind energy projects.

Further revenues for the estate could be generated from tidal energy developments, such as the Severn barrage, and subsea cabling - for which the Crown also charges a lease.

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