Almost 8 GW of projects win in UK offshore wind leasing round

Offshore wind farm near Wales. Author: alh1. License: Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.

Six projects with a combined capacity of close to 8 GW were selected to proceed in the fourth round of the offshore wind leasing competition in the UK, the Crown Estate said today.

The British seabed landlord opened the tender last year in order to award seabed rights for wind projects across four Seabed Bidding Areas off the coasts of England and Wales, namely “Dogger Bank”, “Eastern Regions”, “South East”, and “Northern Wales and Irish Sea.” It sought to award at least 7 GW of capacity.

Details on the selected projects are available in the table below.

Successful bidder	Bidding Area	Location	Project capacity (MW)
RWE Renewables	(1) Dogger Bank	Off Yorkshire Coast, North East of Scarborough	1,500
RWE Renewables	(1) Dogger Bank	Off Yorkshire Coast, North East of Scarborough	1,500
Green Investment Group - Total	(2) Southern North Sea region	Off Lincolnshire Coast, East of the Humber Estuary	1,500
EnBW - BP	(4) North Wales region	Off the Northern Welsh Coast, North East of Anglesey	1,500
Offshore Wind Ltd (Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios, SA-Flotation Energy plc)	(4) North Wales region	Off the Lancashire Coast	482
EnBW - BP	(4) North Wales region	Off the coast of Barrow-In-Furness	1,500

The shortlisted proposals will now move through an environmental assessment known as a plan-level Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA), to examine their potential impacts on the national protected areas.

The HRA process is planned to be finalised in the spring of 2022, after which developers will be granted lease contracts. Their projects could start generating electricity by the end of 2030, with their output expected to offset almost 12.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year.

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