THE CROWN ESTATE ANNOUNCES ROUND 3 OFFSHORE WIND DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS
A significant step has now been taken towards the large scale exploitation of offshore wind energy resources around the UK coast. The Crown Estate has revealed the successful bidders for each of the nine Round 3 offshore wind zones within UK waters. If fully developed the nine areas could generate as much as 32GW of electricity or around a quarter of the UK’s projected total requirements by the year 2020.
Of the nine zones five are off the east coast of the UK in a line stretching from northern Scotland to East Anglia, two are off the south coast and the final two off the west coast. In detail they are:
Moray Firth Zone – Moray Offshore Renewables, 75 per cent owned by EDP Renovaveis and 25 per cent by SeaEnergy Renewables, 1.3GW.
Firth of Forth Zone – SeaGreen Wind Energy, owned equally by SSE Renewables and Fluor, 3.5GW.
Dogger Bank Zone – Forewind Consortium, owned equally by SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft, 9GW.
Hornsea Zone – Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power with the involvement of Hochtief Construction, 4GW.
Norfolk Bank Zone – East Anglia Offshore Wind, owned equally by Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft, 7.2GW.
Hastings Zone – Eon Climate and Renewables UK, 0.6GW.
West of Isle of Wight Zone – Eneco New Energy, 0.9GW.
Bristol Channel Zone – RWE Npower Renewables (UK subsidiary of RWE Innogy), 1.5GW.
Irish Sea Zone – Centrica Renewable Energy with the involvement of RES Group, 4.2GW.
The announcements were made at a high profile launch event in London that was attended by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, as well as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Milliband and representatives of all the winning organisations. Understandably the occasion was largely upbeat with an emphasis on both the unprecedented scale of the venture and the economic benefits likely to result from it in terms of both employment and eventual power output.
According to Gordon Brown completion of the Round 3 projects would make the UK the “clear leader” in offshore wind power generation worldwide. As such, he said, the decision to go ahead and allocate areas to the bid-winning organisations was a “defining moment” in the development of the industry. He estimated that around 14,000 jobs might be created within UK manufacturing during the construction phase, anything from 20,000-30,000 through installation and maintenance operations and as many as 25,000 through the provision of services. A series of supply chain events are due to be held across the UK in January, February and March to ensure that UK business is aware of the scale of opportunity involved in the Round 3 initiative.
One question mark, though, hangs over the issue of whether the UK is capable of supplying enough personnel with appropriate skills to support the construction of all the proposed sites. Ed Milliband said that discussions were taking place between his department and that of Lord Mandelson to address this issue. Interestingly he also indicated that a special working group was being set up by Lord Mandelson to identify all the requirements that would need to be satisfied in order to facilitate the Round 3 development.
Meanwhile another contentious issue is that of the need for an associated ‘super grid’ – effectively a power collection and distribution network with a large amount of supporting computer power to deal with issues like intermittency of generation. A longtime proponent of the need for such a grid is Dr Eddie O’Connor, chief executive of Mainstream Renewable Power. O’Connor was emphatic that the need for a supporting infrastructure of this sort was unavoidable. In fact he bluntly stated that without a parallel super grid development programme, the intended benefits of constructing the turbines would be largely negated.
As such, then, it seems that the projected Round 3 development could prove to be a landmark in the global power generation industry by establishing the practicability of large-scale offshore wind power. But some key associated issues will need to be tackled if the development is to deliver on its promised benefits.
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