Crown Estate Scotland has confirmed that all three successful ScotWind Clearing applicants now have seabed option agreements
The projects in question are the 1.8-GW Arven offshore windfarm proposed by Ocean Winds and Mainstream Renewable Power; a further 500-MW prokect proposed by Ocean Winds; and a 500-MW project proposed by ESB.
With the agreements in place, the trio of offshore wind projects can move into the development stage.
Full seabed leases are granted at a later stage once applicants have the necessary consents from regulators, such as Marine Scotland, and have secured grid connections and financing.
The addition of three more ScotWind projects takes to 20 the total number of ScotWind projects which now have option agreements confirmed. Together these total up to 27.6 GW of clean energy.
A total of £56M in option fees will be paid by the three successful applicants taking the total figure for ScotWind option fees for the 20 projects to £755M. Once operating, projects will pay Crown Estate Scotland multi-million pound annual payments. These funds will be passed to Scottish Government for public spending.
A key part of ScotWind is focusing on supply chain, from the outset, 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.
The latest figures, taking into account all 20 projects, now show initial Scottish commitments total £28.8Bn, indicating an average of £1.4Bn investment in Scotland per project built, and £1Bn investment in Scotland per gigawatt of capacity built.
The addition of the three agreements concludes the ScotWind leasing round.
