The Crown Estate has been urged to commence a process to grant seabed rights for offshore wind projects off Northern Ireland.
Niamh Kenny, director of SBM’s North Channel Wind project, which plans to install an array of floating wind turbines off the east Antrim coast, said seabed rights auctions will catalyse the project’s development.
Kenny has stated priorities the NI Executive “must resolve as soon as possible”.
These include the creation of a ministerial task force to focus on the acceleration of offshore wind in Northern Ireland.
The other priorities include a Contracts for Difference auction to be accelerated to 2026, with award in 2027 to facilitate FID for offshore projects by 2028, consenting guidelines for offshore wind, statutory time limits in place for all of the regulatory, consenting and licencing steps and a resourcing plan for key government departments to enable prompt processing of applications to meet statutory timelines.
“Developers of the North Channel Wind project, SBM Offshore, have confidence that the waters off Northern Ireland provide better conditions for a floating wind turbine array than anywhere else around the UK and Ireland, it is a real offshore wind sweet spot,” she said.