ScotWind leasing results announced

Ten of the selected projects will be floating, including one using BW Ideol's Floatgen technology. [Image: BW Ideol/V. Joncheray]

Crown Estate Scotland has announced the outcome of its application process for ScotWind Leasing, the first Scottish offshore wind leasing round in over a decade and the first ever since the management of offshore wind rights were devolved to Scotland.

The results coming just months after Glasgow hosted the global COP26 climate conference show the huge opportunity that Scotland has to transform its energy market and move towards a net zero economy, says Crown Estate Scotland..

Highlights include:

• 17 projects have been selected out of a total of 74 applications, and have now been offered option agreements which reserve the rights to specific areas of seabed

• A total of just under GBP 700 million (about $956 million) will be paid by the successful applicants in option fees and passed to the Scottish Government for public spending

• The area of seabed covered by the 17 projects is just over 7,000 square kilometers (a maximum of 8,600 square kilometers was made available through the Scottish Government’s Sectoral Marine Plan)

Ten of the projects will be floating wind farms, six will be fixed and one will be a mix of fixed and floating.

“Just a couple of months after hosting COP26, we’ve now taken a major step towards powering our future economy with renewable electricity,” said Simon Hodge, Chief Executive of Crown Estate Scotland, “The variety and scale of the projects that will progress onto the next stages shows both the remarkable progress of the offshore wind sector, and a clear sign that Scotland is set to be a major hub for the further development of this technology in the years to come.”

Should any application not progress to signing a full agreement, the next highest scoring application will instead be offered an option.

Once these agreements are officially signed, the details of the supply chain commitments made by the applicants as part of their Supply Chain Development Statements will be published.