INTERNATIONAL giants have underlined their interest in the offshore wind power generation market in Scotland ahead of a key licensing round.
French oil and gas major TotalEnergies said it has linked up with Australian investment bank Macquarie to bid for acreage in the forthcoming ScotWind round.
The firms expect to bid as part of a consortium that they have formed with Renewable Infrastructure Development Group, which is a wind specialist based in Scotland.
The consortium said it would draw on the extensive expertise of members firms to “leverage Scotland’s domestic supply chain and deliver world-class developments that will accelerate the country’s energy transition”.
TotalEnergies, which was known as Total until last month, has already made a move into the wind sector in Scotland. In June last year the company acquired a majority stake in the giant Seagreen windfarm off the Angus Coast from SSE, in a deal worth up to £130 million.
It has a big North Sea oil and gas exploration and production business. This forms part of the Total Energies E&P UK business led by Jean-Luc Guiziou.
Macquarie is participating in the ScotWind bid consortium through the business formerly known as the Green Investment Bank. It acquired the bank for £2.3bn in 2017 following the privatisation of the organisation by the UK Government. Macquarie has a stake in Storrega Geotechnologies, which is leading on the development of the Acorn carbon capture and storage project in Aberdeenshire.
Launched by Crown Estate Scotland in June last year, ScotWind is the first offshore wind leasing round to cover acreage off the country for a decade.
The round is expected to pave the way to around 10 new commercial windfarms being developed off Scotland.
Green Investment Group and RIDG announced in May last year that they had formed a partnership with a view to bidding for licences in the ScotWind Round.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel