The Crown Estate, as manager of the seabed around Wales, England and Northern Ireland, has awarded seabed rights to developers Blue Gem Wind, for the proposed 96 MW Erebus floating wind demonstration project, in the Welsh waters of the Celtic Sea, approximately 44km from shore.
This is the first time that rights have been awarded for floating wind in Wales. The Crown Estate, as manager of the seabed around Wales, England and Northern Ireland, has awarded seabed rights to developers Blue Gem Wind, for the proposed 96 MW Erebus floating wind demonstration project, in the Welsh waters of the Celtic Sea, approximately 44km from shore. This is the first time that rights have been awarded for floating wind in Wales
The announcement builds on two further offshore wind developments in Wales. The first is The Crown Estate’s award of seabed rights for the proposed extension to the Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm (known as Awel y Môr), located off the coast of North Wales. Once consented, the extension could deliver up to 576 MW of capacity, adjacent to the existing project.
The second, confirmed last year, is the inclusion of areas of Wales’s seabed in The Crown Estate’s Offshore Wind Leasing Round 4. The Northern Wales and Irish Sea Bidding Areas is one of four seabed areas that have been made available to the market as part of the Round 4 process. Projects from Leasing Round 4 will be identified later this year, as part of a competitive tender process, and subject to an environmental assessment, could be awarded rights in 2021. Once consented and developed, Round 4 projects could be operational as early as 2030.
