The Crown Estate has awarded its first contracts in what is anticipated to be a multi-million pound series of technical and environmental surveys around potential locations for new floating wind farms.

By investing in the surveys at an early stage and making the data freely available to successful bidders, The Crown Estate is aiming to accelerate the delivery of projects, making it easier for developers to take early decisions and manage risk, while supporting future project level Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) as part of the planning process. Datasets will eventually be made freely available through The Crown Estate’s Marine Data Exchange.
After a year of discussion with technical advisors, industry and other stakeholders, including conservation bodies, The Crown Estate will deliver datasets for developers covering a range of important areas, including the geophysical and geotechnical properties of the seabed, wind, wave and current patterns, and marine wildlife.

As well as providing successful bidders with easy access to vital data and speeding up the development process, it is hoped the programme will avoid the need for developers to conduct additional surveys later in the process, while making best use of limited specialist survey resource.

Contracts have now been signed for the initial phase of metocean surveys, which look at wind, wave and current patterns, to begin in Spring 2023. The Crown Estate is progressing the procurement of the remaining surveys over the coming weeks and months, subject to further commercial discussions.

The Crown Estate is developing its leasing approach for the Celtic Sea floating offshore wind programme through close engagement with other key stakeholders, including the UK and Welsh governments and industry. The Crown Estate expects to provide further updates to developers in the first half of 2023 ahead of the official launch of the leasing tender. The Crown Estate is currently refining its broad ‘Areas of Search’ into a series of smaller Project Development Areas (PDAs).
In order to further accelerate the leasing process, the work to identify the final PDAs is being undertaken simultaneously with the plan-level Habitats Regulations Assessment, which assesses the potential impact of leasing plans on the most valuable environmental habitats in the UK, which make up the ‘UK National Network.’

Surveys focusing on the Project Development Areas are:
• Metocean (approved for Spring / Summer 2023)
• Geophysics (in procurement, for Spring/Summer 2023)
• Geotechnical (in procurement, for Summer 2023)
• Birds and marine mammals (in procurement, estimated to start Spring 2023)