ScotWind Auction Raises £700m
Scotland has leased areas of seabed to investors for offshore wind farms after the successful bids were announced this week.
The ScotWind programme is leasing areas of seabed around Scotland to investors to develop wind farms. A combination of fixed and floating wind farms will be developed from a range of investors including BP, SSE and Shell.
Crown Estate Scotland announced on Tuesday the 17 selected wind farm projects which have a combined capacity to generate 25 Gigawatt of power.
Today, we’ve announced the results of ScotWind, the first Scottish offshore wind leasing round in a decade. This is an early but important step towards building the next generation of offshore wind projects. https://t.co/19GVmZRPdm
— Crown Estate Scot (@CrownEstateScot) January 17, 2022
1/3 #ScotWind #NetZero #OffshoreWind pic.twitter.com/4gvY86bBaT
The Scottish Government will receive around £700 million in revenue from the project. Investment has been secured at an estimated £1 billion for every gigawatt of power for the Scottish supply chain.
The government projects thousands of green jobs will be created which will offer future opportunities to those currently working in the oil and gas sector as Scotland transitions to Net-zero. There is potential for Scotland to be a significant exporter of renewable energy.
First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon commenting on the deal said: “The scale of opportunity here is truly historic. ScotWind puts Scotland at the forefront of the global development of offshore wind, represents a massive step forward in our transition to net zero, and will help deliver the supply chain investments and high-quality jobs that will make the climate transition a fair one.
“It allows us to make huge progress in decarbonising our energy supply. The scale of opportunity exceeds our current planning assumption of 10GW of offshore wind - which is a massive vote of confidence in Scotland.”
Whilst the project will create new jobs and investment in renewable energy it has been met with some criticism due to apparent human rights records of some of the international investors. There is also concern that Scottish resources have been sold to international investors rather than creating a state-owned energy company.
Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour leader, said: “One of the new owners of Scotland’s seabed is the Swedish state-owned energy company, which can now use its part of the Scottish seabed to keep energy bills down for people in Sweden. Why is it that the people of Sweden now own a bigger stake in Scottish energy supply and distribution than do the Scottish people?”