Scotland now has one of the largest capacity pipelines for floating offshore wind projects in the world. The ScotWind leasing round has over 19GW of potential floating wind projects and the developers involved are targeting delivery of these projects between 2028-2033.
The opportunity to manufacture as many of the substructures as possible in Scotland for all of these future floating wind projects has resulted in significant effort on the part of the Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies to plan for how this could be achieved.
The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council has been instrumental in forging a developer Collaborative Framework which has resulted in the industry and Scottish Government coming together to investigate a private/public partnership solution to investing in the necessary infrastructure and supply chain manufacturing opportunities. This work has resulted in the Strategic Investment Model or SIM.
The SIM sets out a mechanism for investment of the funds that the offshore wind developers and the public sector have set aside for direct investment into the supply chain, to stimulate manufacturing, and into related port infrastructure. The individual developers laid out these investment plans in their Supply Chain Development Statements which were part of Crown Estate Scotland's seabed leasing programme for ScotWind.
The SIM aims to lower the investment risk associated with building new supply chain manufacturing capacity for offshore wind in Scotland. This will be available to eligible domestic supply chain companies as well as inward investors looking to set up new manufacturing facilities in Scotland.
FLOWMIS
The BEIS Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme (FLOWMIS) is a £160m competitive funding pot that will open to applications later in 2023. It is aimed at assisting floating wind related port and manufacturing investments in the UK.
BEIS conducted a Request for Information exercise with industry in May 2022 with the aim of informing the potential scope and makeup of the FLOWMIS fund. We are now awaiting the outcome of this industry consultation which is expected to be published in the 1st Quarter of 2023.
The bulk of this funding is expected to go to projects in Scotland and the Celtic Sea area as both represent the largest concentration of floating wind projects in the UK.
For more information on FLOWMIS please use the link below to the relevant page on the BEIS web site which will be updated as more details become available.
The 19.3GW of floating wind projects in the ScotWind round, along with the 5.4GW in the INTOG round, represent a huge manufacturing opportunity for major components such as substructures and for various subcomponents from the mooring and cable systems.
The map below shows the all of the floating wind projects in the ScotWind leasing round along with their proximity to Scottish ports. The ports are split into the larger sites capable of hosting turbine marshalling and substructure manufacture or assembly along with the ports more suitable to mooring and cable marshalling activity. The map also identifies the location of both the Floating Wind Port Cluster and the two Green Freeport Zones in Scotland in the Cromarty Firth and Firth of Forth areas.
The larger operational sites, and those with currently under construction or planned extensions, have been identified as ports capable of delivering substructure manufacturing facilities. Some of these ports have already been earmarked for concrete substructure manufacture.
Over 1,200 Substructures
If successful with their planning applications, the ScotWind and INTOG round projects will require over 1,200 floating substructures, assuming 20MW turbines, spread over a 5-6 year period from 2028-2033 (24,671MW/20MW = 1,233 units).
The Floating Wind Manufacturing HPO document, available to download using the link further down this page, also sets out the scale of the manufacturing capacity required to deliver the other components such as the thousands of anchors, dynamic cables, cable protection systems, buoyancy models and clump weights along with thousands of kilometres of mooring chain and ropes.
Companies interested in finding out more about these floating wind manufacturing opportunities in Scotland can contact us using the email enquires link below.
The Department for International Trade's HPO programme is aimed at showcasing significant inward investment opportunities from around the UK. Highlands and Islands and Islands Enterprise, along with Scottish Development International, were successful in bidding into this programme with our Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing proposition.
Download a PDF copy of this document using the link below.
The Cromarty Green Freeport Zone was recently awarded freeport status after a competitive bid process involving five competing zones. The Cromarty Zone consists of four tax sites, four port sites and an airport listed as follows:
These tax zones offer a significant advantage for offshore wind related manufacturing in the Freeport area with a range of tax incentives such as enhanced capital allowances, relief from Stamp Duty Land Tax (SLDT) and employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for new employees. New eligible companies can also benefit from full business rate relief.
This can add up to a very significant package of incentives for both Scottish companies moving into the tax sites and inward investors looking to set up new floating wind manufacturing facilities.
Companies interested in setting up an offshore wind manufacturing operation in the zone can find out more about the Green Freeport incentives and opportunities by contacting us using the email enquires link below
The Floating Wind Port Cluster consists of four port sites across the Moray and Cromarty Firth area. The Port of Cromarty Firth, at Invergordon, and Port of Nigg are both in the Cromarty Firth, Inverness Port and Ardersier Port are situated in the nearby Moray Firth.
Taken together, they offer extensive quayside and laydown areas and are particularly suited to the manufacturing of substructure and components for floating wind. The Cromarty Firth, with its long sheltered channel, lends itself to wet storage of substructures and is a favourite stacking site for rigs from the oi and gas industry. The video below, featuring the new quayside extension at the port of Cromarty Firth, also demonstrates how substructures can be wet stored in the Firth with two floating oil and gas drilling rigs also making an appearance in the video. The Firth has hosted up to 16 such rigs, at the same time, in the recent past during an activity downturn in the North Sea oil and gas sector just a few years ago.
Further development work is planned at Invergordon, Nigg and Arderiser to prepare them for the floating wind sector and Ardersier Port has already signed a Letter of Intent with BW Ideol to manufacture concrete substructures for the Floating Wind Allyance. BW Ideol is also a member of this floating wind developers consortium with Baywa r.e. and Elicio.
The Floating Wind Port Cluster described above was identified in the SOWEC report, Scottish Offshore Wind Investment Assessment which looked at all the port options in Scotland for the future delivery of offshore projects. This report can be downloaded from this site using the link button below.
The Scottish floating wind port cluster is based on four ports in the Cromarty and Moray Firths. All four ports now form part of the Cromarty Firth Green Free Port Zone.
Quay West development. Video credit: Port of Cromarty Firth
Find out about the newly completed development at Quay West development at Port of Cromarty Firth in the video.
