How Britain’s dirtiest region hopes to become a hub for clean energy

At the Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull, workers are busy making 180 turbine blades of Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Each is 108 metres long, a giant sabre-shaped tooth crafted to slice through the air. A core of fibreglass is layered with epoxy resin, balsa wood and plastic to produce “just the right combination of flexibility and stiffness”, says Andy Sykes, the project director.Once ready, the blades will be laid horizontally on boats in the Humber estuary to head north for installation. The waters off Britain’s east coast are dotted with windmills that supplied almost a sixth of the country’s electricity last year. Two-thirds of these turbines have blades made in Hull.