The Crown Estate we have announced an ambition to unlock up to 4GW of new floating offshore wind capacity in the Celtic Sea by 2035, enough to power almost four million homes. Floating wind is the next frontier in the green growth story, and we are proud to be playing a key role in its deployment.
The Crown Estate is responsible for leasing seabed space for renewable energy projects in the waters around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Our approach is designed to help address the evolving strategic challenges in our increasingly complex marine environment, so the UK can maximise the green energy potential of its seabed and shoreline. We are excited about the huge potential of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea to support the development of a UK supply chain for this nascent industry and to help deliver on the government’s net zero ambitions.
During early 2022, we reviewed the potential scale of the opportunity in the Celtic Sea, taking account of the continued and growing market interest, the views of stakeholders, and the spatial capacity in the Celtic Sea.
This document explains how, through this process, we have identified five broad Areas of Search (AoS), which will be subject to further engagement and refinement to guide where floating offshore wind farms will be located (Project Development Areas). The overall aim of this analysis was to characterise opportunities and risks, with the purpose of identifying economically viable AoS that also minimise as much as possible the impact to other users and interests within the marine environment.
The analysis: • supports early engagement with stakeholders to enhance understanding of spatial interactions, co-location opportunities and risks to other seabed activities; • provides a spatial context to inform statutory marine planning and other policy development; • enables a stakeholder-validated evidence base to feed into the spatial modelling process and subsequent spatial refinement; • informs the leasing process, which will begin in 2023.
