Crown Estate Scotland, a government body that manages the Scottish seabed rights, has confirmed that all 17 successful ScotWind offshore wind leasing round applicants now have option agreements in place meaning that their projects can move into the development stage.
As previously reported, the winners of the competitive bidding round, which attracted 74 applications, and through which offshore wind farms of a total capacity of 25 GW will be developed, were announced in January.
Full seabed leases are granted at a later stage once applicants have the necessary consent from regulators, such as Marine Scotland, and have secured grid connections and financing, Crown Estate Scotland.
"A key focus of ScotWind is encouraging supply chain investment to develop the Scottish projects. In a world first, Crown Estate Scotland mandated that applicants must outline supply chain commitments as part of their application for an option agreement, with commitments then updated throughout development as project specifics such as timing and technology become clearer. Summaries of all initial commitments – which indicate an average of £1bn investment in Scotland per gigawatt of capacity built – will be published by Crown Estate Scotland in the coming weeks," Crown Estate Scotland said.
Colin Maciver, Head of Offshore Wind Development for Crown Estate Scotland, said, “Seventeen agreements are now in place to help deliver these offshore wind projects that are central to Scotland’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency, secure the UK’s energy supply, and generate billions of pounds of investment in Scotland. This is an early but critical step towards having turbines in the water, ready to generate clean energy. We look forward to working with all applicants over the years to come.”
According to the regulator, this is just the first stage of the extensive process these projects will go through, as they evolve through planning, consenting, and financing stages. Responsibility for these next steps does not sit with Crown Estate Scotland, and projects will only progress to a full seabed lease once all these various planning stages have been completed.
ScotWind also includes a Clearing process, which allows applicants who met required standards but were out-competed for their chosen location to revise their application for an available alternative location.
The deadline for Clearing applications will be confirmed soon, with any resulting option agreements to be signed later in 2022.
For the ScotWind round winners, or more precisely, lead applicants behind the winning bids, see more details below. Also, for details on all the participants in the winning consortia, download Crown Estate Scotland's updated PDF HERE.
