Britain is to become the industrial centre for what is being claimed will be the world's most advanced wind turbines after Gamesa committed itself to opening three big installations in the UK. as Jorge Calvet pitched the Spanish green energy group into a technology race against Mitsubishi, Siemens, General Electric and alstom, he told Britain to stop fretting about the effectiveness of wind power. Instead, the Gamesa chairman and chief executive said, it should believe that it had the skills and supply chain to deliver thousands of offshore wind turbines over the coming decade. Mr Calvet pledged to make the country his company's global centre for offshore wind development. He said that Gamesa would build a manufacturing plant, likely to be either on the Tyne or the Humber, in addition to a research and development facility that it will open near Glasgow, teaming with Strathclyde, Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, and a manufacturing facility in Dundee. Gamesa will also open a corporate headquarters in London. The Spanish investment bankerturned-wind energy champion said it was likely that Gamesa, which previously has had no presence in Britain, would directly employ 1,200 people in the UK, with a similar number of jobs created among suppliers. Yet Mr Calvet was critical of green energy sceptics who question whether Britain has the capability or capacity to build the 30 gigawatts of renewable power, mainly through offshore wind farms, envisaged by the Government's policy of developing a low-carbon economy. "The British should be a bit more optimistic," Mr Calvet told The Times. "The UK has centuries of industrial know-how and some of the world's great engineering companies, the likes of BaE Systems and Land Rover. There is a lot of knowledge in the universities and they turn out great engineers. We are looking at creating more than 2,000 high-quality jobs, high quality because of the level of knowledge that will be needed. Our preference is to source British engineers." He said that he had no doubts about being able to construct a supply chain where there is none. "We had nothing in China five years ago and now we have six manufacturing plants." Gamesa will make its next generation of wind turbines in their entirety in Britain rather than ship in parts. It plans technology-stretching seven megawatt wind turbines, more than twice the size of the biggest turbines in the market that in length and weight would be the size of an airbus a340 super-jumbo aircraft. "These will be the most advanced turbines in the world," Mr Calvet said. Sceptics fear that recent data showing negligible amounts of electricity being produced on still winter days could prove that tens of billions of pounds of investment in wind turbines is an expensi