Wind Energy – Scotland
The results are in. 17 successful bids have been announced by Crown Estate Scotland, which if agreed, consented and financed will deliver almost 25GW of offshore wind in Scottish waters.
Almost 15GW of that is floating offshore wind, which equals 20% of the total global floating pipeline.
The 25GW announced is well in excess of the 10GW capacity proposed by ScotWind. The overall potential capacity of the different zones was 26GW, so essentially high volume of bids (and enough bids to avoid overlapping projects) have meant that Crown Estate Scotland has been able to award more than its publicly stated figure. The bulk of different zones are full or nearly full to capacity, with only 1 zone not utilised. That is good news both in terms of pipeline and level of investment of course.
The global wind community has been overwhelmed with a tsunami of joyful messages in recent days. All 17 winners were over the moon.
Looking at the list of lead applicants, it is striking that there is a very strong oil and gas presence. BP, TotalEnergies, and Shell. They were also the first with their victorious announcements.
But at the same time, there are also a few big names missing. No Ørsted (they are partner in the Falck bid), EDF Renewables or Equinor for example. Also Mainstream Renewables, Siemens, and Red Rock Power are among the 57 companies and consortiums which failed to be designated offshore wind acreage in Scotland’s waters. This might be called a surprise.
So far there was no specific comment from one of these ‘missing’ companies. They will await feedback from the Crown Estate Scotland before making an evaluation. Curious to hear what they have to say in the end.
A spokesman for Crown Estate Scotland said: “We assessed applications in line with the published criteria laid out at the start of the process, including project information such as concept, budget and deliverability, and developer information such as capability, experience and financial resources.
“The projects offered option agreements are those that best demonstrated their ability to deliver the best projects for the sites in question – it was an extremely competitive process and it was a painstaking effort to select the 17 successful projects that we have named.”
