ScotWind round wraps up with 25 GW of offshore wind awards

Crown Estate Scotland (CES) on Monday announced that 17 projects totalling some 24.8 GW had secured option agreements in the ScotWind offshore wind lease auction round after being selected from a pool of 74 applications.

The winning promoters, which include big-name utilities, investment funds and oil-and-gas majors such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc (AMS:RDSA) and BP Plc (LON:BP) were offered lease rights to build bottom-fixed and floating wind farms covering 7,343 square kilometres (2,835 sq miles) of seabed area around Scotland. A maximum of 8,600 square kilometres was made available through the Scottish government’s sectoral marine plan, CES said.

Successful applicants will pay option fees totalling just under GBP 700 million (USD 956.4m/EUR 837.6m), which the Scottish government use for public spending, CES added.

ScotWind’s largest winner was ScottishPower Renewables, part of Spanish utility group Iberdrola SA (BME:IBE), which secured options for 7 GW of floating and bottom-fixed offshore wind projects. The company proposed to build two floating wind projects with Shell and one 2-GW bottom-fixed scheme alone.

The smallest proposal was submitted by Norwegian renewables investor Magnora ASA (OSE:MGN), which is pursuing a 495-MW offshore wind project using a mix of foundations.

The full list of successful companies and consortia can be seen here: https://www.crownestatescotland.com/resources/documents/scotwind-list-of-successful-project-partners-170122

If any of the applicants fail to progress to signing a full agreement, the next highest scoring application will be offered an option in their place. Before securing a full seabed lease, the projects have to complete consenting, financing and planning stages.

(GBP 1.0 = USD 1.366/EUR 1.197)

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