Ocean Winds and Aker Offshore Wind have formed a collaboration to build floating wind projects off the coast of Scotland. The firms, who are already partners in California, the United States, and South Korea, will now work together in the Scotland leasing phase. The two firms will make a joint proposal to Crown Estate Scotland by July 16th, 2021.
More than half of the world’s semi-submersible floating offshore facilities have been designed and delivered by Aker. More importantly, they are an excellent complement to Ocean Winds, with synergies that make their collaboration greater than the sum of its parts. Aker contributes five decades of offshore experience in the oil and gas sector, as well as expertise and competence, to the industrialization and scaling of floating offshore technologies. Ocean Winds has a record of renewable energy development, which is why they are involved in Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm. The two companies have now formed a collaboration to build floating wind projects off the coast of Scotland.
Many large renewable energy developers are collaborating to enter and make developments in the booming offshore wind space in Europe. For instance, Ocean Winds is a 50-50 joint venture between Spain’s EDP Renewables (EDPR) and France’s ENGIE and already has a presence in Scotland. The firm, based in Edinburgh, is behind the Moray East offshore wind farm, which is now under development off the coast of Aberdeenshire. Following this collaboration, Equinor and Eni also announced a plan to collaborate on the development of floating offshore wind plants in the North Sea as part of their expansion within renewable energy production.
The Norwegian government has earmarked two areas in the North Sea for developing 4.5 GW of floating and bottom-fixed wind turbine capacity and plans. A discussion is set to take place in the Norwegian parliament by next month.
