The achievement has been made possible after building work finished at Centrica's Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms near Skegness.

Offshore wind farms now have the potential to power the equivalent of around 300,000 UK homes. This follows the Prime Minister's announcement at the British Wind Energy Association's conference this morning that the UK now gets 3 gigawatts of electricity from wind power.

Mike O'Brien, Minister of State at the new Department of Energy and Climate Change made the announcement whilst visiting the wind farms off the coast of Skegness this morning.

The news that the UK is now the world leader in wind power follows today's announcement by the Carbon Trust to help accelerate offshore wind power in the UK. The Carbon Trust will work with five major energy companies, on a new £30m initiative to cut the costs of energy from offshore wind by 10%.