RWE, SSE and Equinor winners from new UK plan to boost offshore wind
Crown Estate launches plan to increase capacity of projects that could be delivered by 2030 in boost to UK’s renewable energy and clean power targets
RWE, Equinor and SSE are among the developers that stand to benefit from a new Crown Estate plan to boost the capacity of existing offshore wind lease areas by almost 5GW.
The Crown Estate, the seabed landlord for England & Wales, announced today that it is proceeding with its Capacity Increase Programme to maximise the potential of existing offshore wind lease areas.
An additional 4.7GW of energy could be generated by amending existing seabed rights to increase the capacity of seven fixed-bottom offshore wind farms being developed by Germany’s RWE, Norwegian oil giant Equinor and Britain’s SSE.
“Delivering the Capacity Increase Programme is an effective way to provide up to four million homes with secure, clean energy and further decrease the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels, often sourced internationally,” said Gus Jaspert, Managing Director, Marine at The Crown Estate.
“Balancing the needs of energy and nature is an important responsibility we carefully consider, and we’re confident in the environmental compensation measures which will accompany the delivery of the programme.”
That made the Labour government’s already difficult goal of deploying 43-50GW of offshore wind by 2030 substantially harder.
The seven projects that could see their capacity boosted were awarded rights in either The Crown Estate’s Offshore Wind Leasing Round 3 or The Crown Estate’s 2017 Offshore Wind Extensions opportunity, which aims to efficiently unlock additional offshore wind capacity by extending existing offshore wind farms.
Power giant RWE is a developer of four of those projects, including its currently up to 1.1GW Awel y Môr array in the Irish Sea, its 1.1GW Five Estuaries project and its 1.2GW Rampion 2 site. It is also developing the currently up to 504MW North Falls project with SSE.
Another project that stands to benefit is the already up to 2GW Dogger Bank D wind farm being developed by Equinor and SSE. The programme could also see the capacity of Equinor’s 402MW Dudgeon Extension and its 317MW Sheringham Shoal Extension increased.
The Crown Estate said that an extensive Habitats Regulations Assessment was undertaken to assess the effects of the Capacity Increase Programme on protected habitats.
After this had been concluded, the Crown Estate said that energy secretary Ed Miliband agreed that the programme should proceed on the basis of a derogation, with compensation measures to address the identified impacts on marine habitats and species.
The Crown Estate said it maintained that proceeding with the capacity increases is in the national interest due to the contribution towards the UK’s 2030 clean power targets and decarbonisation of the electricity grid.
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