“ScotWind has really put Scotland on a pedestal for offshore wind supply chains,” claimed Sharanya Kumaramurthy, market intelligence manager at Energy Industries Council at Solar Media’s Wind Power Finance & Investment Summit Europe on Tuesday (19 September).
Speaking on the panel The Development of the ScotWind auction and Upcoming Opportunities – What’s New in the UK Wind Market, Kumaramurthy outlined the successes of the scheme and the impact it has had on supporting supply chains.
“Scotland was already a key player in offshore wind,” she said. “If you look at the offshore wind pipeline as a whole, you have around 42GW of capacity that’s set to come. ScotWind’s 27GW was the bulk of that.”
In light of Kumaramurthy comments, it is clear to see the support that ScotWind has provided in achieving Scotland’s renewable goals – particularly with the government targeting 11GW of offshore wind generation by 2030.
Before we delve further into the panel discussion, it is important to understand what ScotWind is. According to the Crown Estate Scotland, the primary purpose of ScotWind Leasing is to grant property rights for seabed in Scottish waters for new commercial-scale offshore wind project development, in a way that is “fair and transparent”.
The results of the leasing round were released on 17 January 2022. A total of 74 applications were made, with 17 successful projects – ten of which were floating wind. These were then offered option agreements, which reserve the rights to specific areas of land. The total capacity of these projects totalled just under 25GW of capacity.
However, in August 2022, Crown Estate Scotland announced that three additional wind projects, with a cumulative capacity of 2.8GW, were set to be developed in Scotland after being cleared via the ScotWind Leasing initiative, bringing the scheme’s overall capacity to 27.6GW.
At the time, Colin Palmer, director of marine at Crown Estate Scotland, said: “Taking these three into account, the 20 ScotWind projects now total up to 27.6GW with initial supply chain commitments indicating an average of £1.4 billion investment in Scotland per gigawatt of capacity built.”
Fast forward to the present day and, as our panellists stated, many of these successful projects are still in the early development phase.
“Since [receiving the seabed lease] we’ve really got cracking on with early development,” said Susie Lind, managing director UK of BlueFloat Energy and Renantis Partnership’s joint venture, which received rights for offshore floating wind projects via ScotWind.
“We’ve got vessels out there doing great investigation works and we’re churning out data every single day. We’re really advancing on everything that’s going to be required to develop some of these projects.”
Christopher Morris, project manager and chartered civil engineer at Mainstream, who secured 2.3GW via the ScotWind process, echoes Lind stating that it is also in the “early development stage” – particularly in the Shetlands.
Morris said: “We’ve been working on the early development project, particularly on community aspects in Shetland as there’s lots there have a legacy in energy. It’s very much a desire there to see benefits of transitioning to a green economy.
“We’ve really been working with community to understand how we enable our project as Shetland is a long way from the UK. We’re looking at how else we can bring that product to market such as through hydrogen – what are the opportunities there?”
Community engagement is crucial in the deliverance of many of these projects. Many are said to be “supportive” but this early-stage consultation/engagement process must be undertaken to maximise the likelihood of the project’s success.
For instance, as Kateryna McKinnon, development manager of offshore wind development at Crown Estate Scotland, highlighted, although many of the projects are offshore: “onshore infrastructure must be discussed with local communities.”
Lind highlights a vitally important aspect on the deliverance of these offshore wind projects – supply chains. She said: “It’s brilliant that the country has shown ambition with offshore wind, but we need to deliver on this as a supply chain and as a UK government. We all want it to be a success story.
“I think the main thing that has happened from the sector approach is really the recognition of competition, which creates challenges of its own, but of course, also opportunities in attracting the supply chain.”
Kumaramurthy also touched on supply chains and said: “I think once the ScotWind projects have secured their consent then we will start seeing what opportunities will be actually available and tangible for supply chains. And then of course we have issues with grid connections.”
Regular readers of Current± will no doubt be aware of the current grid connection woes the GB energy industry is currently facing and the topic has been discussed in our Current± Explores: the grid connection conundrum mini-series, which ran earlier this year.
On this topic, Morris said: “Although ultimately each developer will be told when we have our grid connection date, the delays mean it is just impossible for us to do the supply chain and gives for the investments that they need to deliver to the timescales.”
Kumaramurthy added: “Just to touch on the grid as well, I think how the developers must wait, the rest of the supply chain does too. I think it’s a wakeup call that it really does depend on connection dates.”
