Seabed agreements for 17 offshore wind projects have been agreed, Crown Estate Scotland has announced.
The ScotWind project, which allowed private companies to buy up parts of Scotland’s seabed to build offshore wind farms, will now move to the development phase.
The Scottish Government programme concluded in January, with major energy companies including Scottish Power, Shell, SSE and BP among those who won the almost £700m in contracts.
At the time, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the announcement was “possibly one of the most significant days in energy and industrial terms that Scotland has seen for a very, very long time”.
Now, projects are able to progress with initial agreements in place.
Colin Maciver, the head of offshore wind at Crown Estate Scotland, said: “17 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.”
Companies involved in the process have been forced to submit commitments to the Scottish supply chain, which will be published in the coming weeks, but Crown Estate Scotland have said the investment in Scottish companies could be as high as £1bn per gigawatt of capacity built.
Earlier today, ScottishPower and Shell announced their signed option-to-lease agreements with Crown Estate Scotland – reserving the seabed rights for their MarramWind and CampionWind floating offshore wind farms.
Destined to be among the first commercial-scale floating offshore wind farms anywhere in the world, MarramWind (3GW) and CampionWind (2GW) - off the East and North East coasts of Scotland - have the potential to power up to six million homes.
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