The Crown Estate has today announced the 3rd round of UK offshore wind farms. It comes as no surprise that the big winners are giant consortiums made up of globally operating utilities and companies with offshore experience. The winners will be taking on unprecedented challenges with sites up to 195km offshore and water depths of up to 80 metres.
The largest zones at Doggerbank (9000 Megawatts) and Norfolk (7200 MW) go to consortia giants Forewind and East Anglia Offshore Wind. Forewind is made up of RWE renewables, Scottish and Southern Energy, Statoil and Statkraft. East Anglia Offshore Wind is Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft.
Eddie O’Connor’s Mainstream Renewables and Siemans bagged the 4000 MW Hornsea zone, whilst SeaGreen Wind Energy Ltd equally owned by SSE Renewables and Fluor, won the Firth of Forth Zone.
Eon and Dutch utility Eneco were left with the smaller south of England coast sites off Brighton and the Isle of Wight.
Prime Minister, Gordon Brown MP said: “Our policies in support of offshore wind energy have already put us ahead of every other country in the world. This new round of licences provides a substantial new platform for investing in UK industrial capacity. The offshore wind industry is at the heart of the UK economy’s shift to low carbon and could be worth £75 billion and support up to 70,000 jobs by 2020.”
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband said: “Our island has one of the best wind energy resources in Europe and today’s news shows we’re creating the right conditions for the energy industry to invest in harnessing it. This is one of the strongest signals yet that the UK is locked irreversibly into a low carbon, energy secure prosperous future.”
The 3rd round of offshore wind development takes engineering and financing challenges to a new level. Doggerbank is between 125 and 195 kilometres offshore with its outer limit aligned to UK continental shelf limit as defined by the UK Hydrographic Office. The area involved is equivalent in size to North Yorkshire.
British Wind Energy Association CEO Maria McCaffery said: “Today’s announcement is a major leap forward in realising the potential for clean, green energy production through wind power: it sets the UK apart as the leading offshore wind energy producer not only in Europe but worldwide both in terms of total potential power generation from offshore, and the scale of new green collar employment opportunity”.
“We need to ensure the UK also benefits through a boost in manufacturing, engineering and skills: but this will only happen if additional action is taken by the Government through working actively to create coastal manufacturing hubs. This will encourage wind energy manufacturing companies to locate in the UK and enable British businesses to take full advantage of the supply chain opportunities for the benefit of jobs and the UK economy as well as Britain’s energy security”.
The announcement confirmed earlier leaked information about which companies had secured the key sites.
Engineering Recruitment
October 26th, 2010
Renewable energy is the way forward and I strongly believe that it can help the UK achieve its climate change commitments and help the UK towards a low carbon economy.