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Floating wind schemes dominate Scotland’s huge offshore leasing round
Ten potential floating offshore wind projects – as well as seven fixed-to-the seabed schemes – have been successful in the first Scottish offshore wind leasing auction in over a decade.
Crown Estate Scotland announced the outcome of its application process for ScotWind Leasing, the first of many steps to be taken before we will see wind turbines in the water, as the projects still have to go through consenting, financing, and planning stages.
Seventeen projects, totalling nearly 25 GW of generating capacity, were selected out of 74 applications; these have been offered option agreements which reserve the rights to specific areas of seabed. The area of seabed covered by the 17 projects is just over 7,000 km2.
Just under £700mn will now be paid by the successful applicants in option fees to the Scottish government. Should any application not progress to signing a full agreement, the next highest scoring application will instead be offered an option, says Crown Estate Scotland.
The largest project, Morven, fixed and with a generating capacity of 2.9 GW is to be developed by BP and German energy company EnBW; the second largest is a 2.6 GW floating scheme proposed by SSE Renewables, working with Japan’s Marubeni and a Danish fund management company. ScottishPower aims to develop three wind farms with a combined 7 GW of capacity, including two floating wind farms to be developed in conjunction with Shel
Other developers winning lease options include Falck Renewables, Vattenfall, DEME, Ocean Winds and Offshore Wind Power.
RenewableUK’s Deputy Chief Executive Melainie Onn stressed the size of the proposed crop of new wind farms: ‘To put this landmark into context, the 25 GW of new capacity announced today is two and a half times the UK’s entire current offshore wind capacity. It’s also equal to the entire current operational offshore wind capacity for the whole of Europe.’
‘It’s highly significant that 60% of the new capacity announced today is for floating offshore wind projects. This will secure the UK’s lead in innovative floating wind, generating enormous amounts of power from the best wind resources in Europe, as well as creating opportunities for us to export our cutting-edge technology worldwide,’ added Onn.
Photo: ScottishPower
