Arup has been appointed by the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), The Crown Estate, and Crown Estate Scotland to research a range of scenarios for future offshore wind development.
The project is part of the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme led by The Crown Estate, together with its Programme partners, BEIS, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The research will provide a greater understanding of the balance between technical, economic, environmental, and system constraints, and their interactions with the costs to deliver the UK’s Net Zero ambition.
The appointment comes at a crucial time in the sector, following the recent launch of the UK Government’s Energy White Paper which outlines the ambition to deploy 40GW of offshore wind by 2030.
Arup will work with the UK technology innovation and research centre, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, and marine consultancy, ABPmer, to develop these scenarios and build a digital and data mapping solution to visualise costs and spatial constraints in an interactive and geospatial format.
This research builds upon existing spatial analysis conducted by The Crown Estate and the Scottish Government’s Sectoral Marine Plan, which aims to identify the most sustainable options for the future development of commercial-scale offshore wind energy.
