The British government has approved construction of a 500-megawatt offshore wind farm in Cumbria, northwest England, the government said on Thursday. It said the Duddon Sands farm, planned near Walney Island off the coast of Barrow-in-Furness, was one of the country's three largest offshore wind farms approved so far. It would comprise up to 139 turbines. Morecambe Wind Ltd, a consortium of Scottish Power, Eurus Energy from Japan and Denmark's state-controlled DONG Energy, is to build and operate the farm. An industry official said it would take several years to build a wind farm of this scale and that it would require investment of well over 1 billion pounds (US$1.8 billion). The government said it had also given the green light to an updated application to Ormonde Energy Ltd to build a 150 megawatt offshore wind farm, near Walney Island. The project, developed by Ormonde's parent Eclipse Energy Co. Ltd, is the world's first offshore gas-wind hybrid energy project, which would generate power from gas during calm weather or periods of wind turbine shutdown. (Reporting by Nao Nakanishi, editing by Anthony Barker)