Simply Blue Group, Subsea 7 and Australian developer Spark Renewables have formed a consortium to pursue floating offshore wind development off New South Wales (NSW).
The recently declared Hunter-Central Coast and Illawarra Renewable Energy Zones offer good opportunities to support the development of floating wind alongside the potential future Commonwealth offshore wind zones, including the proposed Hunter offshore wind area.
Spark Renewables has a large and diversified portfolio of operational and development stage wind, solar and storage assets across Australia, with announced projects in New South Wales and South Australia.
Spark Renewables is owned by Spark Infrastructure, which also owns interests in the NSW transmission network operator Transgrid.
Simply Blue Group is a leading early stage developer of floating offshore wind.
The company has a pipeline of 10GW of projects in Ireland, UK, Europe and America and is committed to creating new economic opportunities for coastal communities and developing projects that co-exist with sustainable fisheries and marine conservation.
With a local presence in Perth Australia, Subsea 7 is a global subcontractor for the delivery of offshore projects and services for the energy industry and has worked on some of the largest offshore wind projects worldwide.
Subsea 7 has already partnered with Simply Blue Group on the Salamander floating offshore wind project in Scotland.
Head of Spark Renewables, Anthony Marriner, said: “The consortium will investigate the suitability of areas for developing an offshore wind farm within the proposed Hunter offshore area and the foreshadowed Illawarra offshore area.
“Community-wide and stakeholder-specific consultation with ecological agencies, Traditional Owners, Australian maritime, aviation and defence must inform any site identification process before we proceed to determining specific projects.
“As an NSW-based company, we understand the community issues, and this is a key focus for us on all our projects.
“We are excited by the opportunities that offshore wind projects can bring to NSW, including an increase in local manufacturing and therefore more jobs to support the local economy.”