The Crown Estate will present its work to design a new leasing round, which could begin as early as next year, at an event next month.
The session, on Wednesday 25 July 2018, is targeted at potential leasing process participants – both existing customers and potential newcomers to the market, and will provide The Crown Estate with an opportunity to gather initial feedback from industry.
The event will provide an overview of The Crown Estate’s work over recent months to consider the potential scale, location and nature of any new seabed rights in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Engagement with statutory stakeholders is already underway, and will continue in parallel. Further engagement with the industry and with wider stakeholders will follow later in the year.
To attend, interested parties are invited to register their details via the offshore wind potential new leasing page of The Crown Estate website by 6 July. Those not able to attend can register to be kept updated as plans progress.
Jonny Boston, senior development manager for The Crown Estate, said: “This event, alongside our discussions with statutory stakeholders, represents the next phase of our work to engage with a breadth of parties, as we consider the scale and location of any new leasing rights. It is an opportunity to share our current thinking and to invite feedback from interested developers, as we seek to balance a range of interests on the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland”
If confirmed, a new round of rights could begin in early 2019, maintaining a pipeline of projects through to the late 2020s and beyond, to support both industry and government ambition for additional offshore wind capacity.
Related content:
New seabed lease arrangements put forward by Crown Estate Scotland
Feature: On track for offshore wind targets Janet Wood found the offshore wind industry is confident that it can achieve 2020 cost targets, with both steady progress and step-changes in view. (Members only)
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“…a new round of rights could begin in early 2019, maintaining a pipeline of projects through to the late 2020s and beyond, to support both industry and government ambition for additional offshore wind capacity…”
3,200 MW Hinkley Point C [HPC] nuclear power plant will generate 24/7 electricity, at a capacity factor or 90%, for its 60 year design life, from an 1.75 square kilometre site. .
950 MW Moray East Offshore Windfarm [MEOW] will generate intermittent electricity, at an average capacity factor of 31.25% over its 25 year lifespan and occupy a sea bed area of 295 square kilometers.
It would take 9.7 MEOW-sized offshore windfarms to generate as much intermittent electricity each year as the 24/7 electricity delivered by HPC. That’s an installed capacity of 9,215 MW and they would occupy 2,860 square kilometres.
Those 9.7 offshore windfarms would have to be built a 2nd time and be 10 years into the 3rd build to deliver for 60 years; that’s a factor of X2.4 and an installed capacity of 22,116 MW.
I wonder how much the present-day monarchy and future monarchs appreciate what needs to be done in their name, in terms of the environmental desecration, ecosystem destruction and species wipe out, to deliver a truly atrocious product that will forever require fossil-fuelled back up?
I strongly suspect the whole Royal Family would get behind a 2nd nuclear power plant instead.
For clarification, details of The Crown Estate and its history are here https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/our-business/our-history/
Now it describes its business:
“The Crown Estate is a £13bn UK real estate business … It includes central London, retail destinations across the country and offshore wind – in our capacity as manager of most of the seabed. We also have a substantial rural holding.
“Established by an Act of Parliament, we return all our profit to Treasury for the benefit of the nation. This has totalled £2.6bn over the last ten years.”