Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced 24 new signatories of the SOWEC Collaborative Framework Charter, which is a pledge to help build a pipeline of supply chain work in the country.
The organisation, representing almost 25GW of ScotWind projects with an estimated value of £1.5bn (€1.75bn) per GW, have agreed to work together in the development and delivery of this Collaborative Framework.
These and other signatories are also responsible for a further 6.7GW of other Scottish projects either in construction or under development.
The announcement was made as part of the First Minister’s speech at the All Energy Conference and Exhibition in Glasgow.
To capitalise on the opportunity of ScotWind, investment is needed in Scottish ports.
2021’s Strategic Investment Assessment, led by Professor Sir Jim McDonald, set out a series of recommendations for how Government and industry needed to work together to secure this investment.
These recommendations have been accepted by SOWEC, and include a recommendation that developers work together through a Collaborative Framework to engage Scottish ports, with an initial focus being fabrication and manufacture for floating platforms and foundations.
Alongside this work, the Scottish Government, enterprise agencies and SOWEC have been engaging Scottish ports to look at how best to involve ports in collaborative discussions with developers.
The 24 developers, which include Orsted, Falck Renewables and Bluefloat Energy, signing up to this Charter will now work jointly together to review the pipeline of Scottish offshore wind projects.
They will also identify ways they can work together to maximise how they work with Scottish ports to share capacity and space and also help underpin new investment.
Sturgeon said: “Wind power is already the cheapest form of power in our electricity mix – it is certainly, for example, cheaper than nuclear power.
“Scotland is developing both our onshore and offshore wind capacity. We have set out our intention of installing a further 8GW to 12GW of onshore wind capacity.
“And the last few months have seen significant progress in developing our offshore wind sector – The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council has co-ordinated a Collaborative Framework Charter, which is being published today.
“It has been signed by 24 companies and under the charter, those developers have agreed to collaborate, to create supply chain work within Scotland.”
SOWEC industry co-chair Brian McFarlane added: “Scotland’s offshore wind industry has made a series of commitments about working to support the Scottish supply chain.
“SOWEC’s Collaborative Framework is a practical way for developers and Scottish ports to work together, to help build a long-term pipeline of work, creating certainty that ports need to prioritise investment in higher value activities like fabrication.
“By working together developers can look for joint opportunities and also mitigate some of the risks faced in bringing together the infrastructure we will need to successfully build out the full pipeline of ScotWind projects.”