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By Nina Chestney
LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Crown Estate Scotland said on
Monday it has offered seabed right agreements to 17 projects in
its ScotWind leasing round which is aimed at supporting wind
energy development.
Out of 74 applications from developers looking for the
rights to build projects across the 15 areas of available
seabed, option agreements have been made to companies including
BP, SSE, Shell New Energies and Scottish
Power Renewables, TotalEnergies and
Vattenfall.
Crown Estate Scotland manages the seabed around Scotland.
Its ScotWind tender leases areas of the seabed around Scotland
for wind farm developments. It is hoped that up to 10 gigawatts
(GW) of offshore wind capacity will be built over the next
decade due to the scheme.
It said that just under 700 million pounds ($957.88
million)will be paid by the successful applicants in option fees
and passed to the Scottish government for public spending.
The area of seabed covered by the 17 projects is just over
7,000 km2. The projects include six for fixed offshore wind, 10
for floating wind and one mixed.
The agreements will now be finalised and developers will
move forward with their plans. Crown Estate Scotland said it
only grants full seabed leases when developers have all the
necessary consents and planning permissions from the Scottish
government and other bodies.
Should any application not progress to signing a full
agreement, the next highest scoring application will instead be
offered an option, Crown Estate Scotland added.
($1 = 0.7308 pounds)
(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and
Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
