Crown Estate launches vision for UK hitting 100GW of offshore wind
Seabed landlord for England & Wales wants to take a more active role in surveying sites for offshore wind to help speed up and de-risk deployment
The Crown Estate has set out its vision for helping the UK reach net zero by deploying almost 100GW of offshore wind by 2040, including through leveraging its partnership with new national clean power company GB Energy.
The Crown Estate, the seabed landlord for England & Wales, today set out its approach to leasing the capacity needed to support the UK’s net zero and energy security ambitions.
This comes after The Crown Estate recently announced a new partnership with GB Energy to bring to market an additional 20-30GW of offshore wind leasing opportunity by 2030 – enough power for almost 20 million homes.
The Crown Estate said it expects much of that new offshore capacity to be in Celtic Sea and off North East England. Other areas that could accommodate “smaller scale developments” lie off the coasts of North Wales, North West England, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
“The Crown Estate's role is evolving significantly,” said RenewableUK chief Dan McGrail. The vision set out in its report will he said help partners to work more closely to “make the most of our terrific marine resources, as well as enabling the industry to ramp up the delivery of vital new projects faster.”
The Crown Estate said it is considering how to tackle some of the “wider systemic challenges” that face offshore wind.
It also wants to “improve the coordination between the process of seabed leasing, energy infrastructure planning and grid connections.”
Its partnership with GB Energy could also help unblock “strategic bottlenecks to speed up the delivery of offshore wind projects, in particular offshore wind ports and wider supply chain.”
“Our evolving approach to offshore wind development is designed to help remove some of the barriers to deployment of important new renewable energy and provide more certainty to investors,” said The Crown Estate’s managing director for marine, Gus Jaspert.
The Crown Estate said its planning is based on forecasts from organisations such as the National Grid ESO and the UK’s Climate Change Committee that have found up to 99GW of offshore wind could be needed by 2040 to “maintain momentum" to net zero by 2050.
The UK currently has around 15GW of offshore wind capacity from a 95GW pipeline. Labour has said it is targeting 60GW of online capacity by 2030, although it was recently reported to be wobbling on this after the latest government renewables auction left the UK far off the pace.
The Crown Estate said it has been working with stakeholders to develop initial plans for a “ground-breaking Marine Delivery Routemap,” which it said will provide a “holistic and long-term view of how the seabed is used.”
This will help accelerate the delivery of offshore renewables, it said, addressing current “pinch-points” such as consenting and grid connections. It will also provide visibility and certainty for developers across a wide range of sectors, identifying new areas for biodiversity and nature restoration.
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