Crown Estate gives green light to offshore wind

The Crown Estate has today started the race to tap the country's offshore wind resources, outlining plans to lease large areas of the sea bed off the coast of the UK to wind farm developers.

Under the plans, the Crown Estate, which owns the UK's sea bed, has identified 11 offshore zones capable of supporting wind farms with up to 25GW of capacity and will tender out the zones to developers next summer.

The move follows two earlier rounds of offshore wind projects which are on track to deliver 8GW of capacity and will allow the UK to meet the government's target of generating up to 33GW of energy from offshore wind farms.

Announcing the new strategy at a British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) conference in London, Rob Hastings, The Crown Estate's director of marine estates said a huge expansion in offshore wind farms was required if the UK was meet its target of generating 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. "The government has committed to challenging carbon targets and wind energy is the only renewable technology that can deliver the required quantity by the required timescales," he said.

He added that the bidding and planning process had been streamlined in an attempt to ensure that work on the new generation of wind farms can begin from 2015.

Upon having their bid approved for exclusive rights to build wind farms in a zone, developers will work with the Crown Estate to identify specific sites based on the results of strategic environmental assessments being carried out by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and designed to address the impact that wind farms will have on marine life and shipping.

Once sites have been identified, the Crown Estate will co-fund the final stages of the planning process with developers as it attempts to ensure the first tranche of sites receive planning permission by 2013.

"The new approach to the deployment of offshore wind… requires us to take an important facilitating role in which we will share the developer’s risk," explained Hastings. "For the first time we will be investing directly in offshore wind farm development. We will be helping to identify suitable sites and working closely with commercial partners who we expect to make considerable capital investments in offshore wind farm assets."

The news is likely to provide a significant confidence boost for investors in offshore wind projects, particularly in the wake of Shell's decision to sell its stake in the high-profile Thames Array project and growing concerns over rising costs. "This is fantastic news for the UK wind industry, with Britain’s seas now officially opened for business," said BWEA chief executive Maria McCaffery. " This announcement has brought delivery of the 2020 renewable energy targets a great deal closer."

She also welcomed the Crown Estates' attempts to speed up the planning approval process, but warned that further reforms will be required if the UK is to meet its 2020 targets. "This [Crown Estate] timetable is a very positive move forward… if the government now acts to speed up the rest of the site assessment and approval process we are confident that we can deliver on time," she said, adding that more had to be done to remove "excessive assessment burdens" from developers and reduce the time it takes to get planning permission.

Energy minister Malcolm Wicks said the government was working to reduce barriers to development, such as "radar, shipping, grid access and infrastructure issues," adding that the government would be consulting over the summer on how best to further streamline planning processes to ensure 2020 renewables targets are met.