Winners announced as £75bn offshore wind revolution gets under way

The UK's largest renewable energy project entered a new phase today when the Crown Estate awarded development rights to nine coalitions, as part of the UK's high-profile £75bn project to develop up to 32MW of new offshore wind energy capacity by 2020.

The government hopes that the new round of contracts – known as Round 3 – will result in a quarter of the UK's total electricity being provided by offshore wind farms by the end of the decade. It added that the awards should result in up to 6,400 additional turbines being installed, supporting up to 70,000 clean energy jobs by 2020.

The Forewind Consortium, which includes SSE Renewables, RWE Npower Renewables, Statoil and Statkraft, emerged as the big winner, securing the rights to develop the largest area, the 9GW Dogger Bank Zone, which is located up to 150 miles offshore.

East Anglia Offshore Wind, a 50:50 venture between Scottish Power Renewables and Vattenfall Vindkraft, was also celebrating today as it was awarded the right to develop the 7.2GW Norfolk Bank Zone.

A coalition including Centrica Renewable Energy and RES Group secured the rights to the 4.2GW zone in the Irish Sea, while access to the 4GW Hornsea Zone off the coast of Yorkshire was awarded to a 50:50 consortium consisting of Siemens Project Ventures and Mainstream Renewable Power.

Three smaller zones, a 1.5GW site in the Bristol Channel, a 0.9GW area to the west of the Isle of Wight, and a 0.6GW zone off the coast near Hastings, were awarded to RWE Npower Renewables, Eneco New Energy and E.ON Climate and Renewables respectively.

Rob Hastings, marine estate director at the Crown Estate, said competition for the rights to develop the nine zones had been fierce. "The fact that there was competition for each of the nine zones highlights the attractiveness of the UK continental shelf to companies investing in offshore wind energy," he said.

The developers will now prepare plans to submit to the newly formed Infrastructure Planning Commission, which will give the final planning permission for construction. Construction work on the first projects is expected to begin in 2014 with the government confident that the new sites will come online before 2020 and play a critical role in ensuring the UK meets its EU target of generating 15 per cent of its energy from renewables by that date.

Attention will now turn to the technical and economic barriers the nine projects will face.

The supply of components, installation craft and skilled workers is seen as one of the main challenges faced by projects, which together will have to install deepwater offshore wind turbines at a rate of one to two a day if they are to meet the government's renewable energy targets.

The Crown Estate – which is investing £100m in supporting the programme – also announced today that it will hold a series of supply chain events across the UK in January, February and March to help kick-start supply chain development.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, which is working on a research and development project to help lower the cost of offshore wind farms, admitted that the winning consortia will also have to overcome significant technical barriers. "The engineering challenge is huge and will require us to deploy offshore turbines at unprecedented rates in hostile waters to ensure we meet our renewable energy and carbon reduction targets," he said.

In addition, industry insiders are concerned that the projects could struggle to attract the £75bn of capital investment that will be required, particularly given that the government has only guaranteed the current rate of financial support for offshore wind farms up until 2014.

However, prime minister Gordon Brown today hinted strongly that the government would take measures to ensure the projects are delivered. "[These projects] will make a significant and practical contribution to reducing our CO2 emissions and the government will work with developers and the Crown Estate to support the growing offshore wind industry and help remove barriers to rapid development," he said.