The Crown Estate has updated developers on the current status of the Celtic Sea floating wind tender round, highlighting work by UK Government to review a number of spatial considerations relating to the potential locations of the proposed windfarms.
In 2021, The Crown Estate set out plans to explore viable options for a potential leasing opportunity for the first commercial-scale floating wind projects to be located in the Celtic Sea off the coast of Wales and the South West of England. This is a new technology which sees turbines placed on floating platforms tethered to the seabed, meaning they can be located in deeper waters than fixed-base wind farms. This as an exciting opportunity to provide clean, secure, renewable energy for millions of homes, while also putting the UK at the front of a new global industry, with opportunities to drive skills, investment and growth.
As part of its work, The Crown Estate has continuously engaged a wide range of stakeholders, including governments, industry and the full range of seabed users. This has focused on a number of important issues, including the spatial work to identify broad areas of search, with the aim of refining these into project development areas to be made available to market via tender.
This engagement has helped highlight that the Celtic Sea is subject to many competing demands and that there are a number of spatial considerations and policy drivers that the UK Government is currently working to resolve, supported by The Crown Estate.
The Crown Estate has now informed developers that it will set out next steps as the UK Government concludes its consideration of these issues and that it will soon circulate further information on the programme as well as a date for the next developer webinar event.
