MANUFACTURING CONCRETE FLOATING WIND FOUNDATIONS IN SCOTLAND

Scotland is a key market for RWE. We have 1O onshore wind farms, 14 hydro power stations, one offshore wind farm and a strong pipeline of development projects. We are fully committed to helping Scotland achieve its ambitious climate change targets. The future global potential of offshore wind depends on delivering floating wind.

The ScotWind leasing round offers an exceptional and unique opportunity for Scotland to establish itself as a global leader in the floating wind market and to stimulate meaningful investment in Scottish manufacturing facilities that would create thousands of jobs. In particular, producing concrete floating substructures in Scotland could deliver high levels of cost competitive local content but there is a lack of industry research into this opportunity. RWE commissioned a report from the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult to address this knowledge gap by investigating whether there were any ‘red flags’ that could prevent this activity happening here, and to consider what steps should be taken to unlock the opportunity.

Positively, as this summary report shows, Scotland is well positioned to manufacture concrete floating substructures with the potential to create high levels of local content. Looking to the future, RWE is now keen to build a broad coalition that can work together to make this a reality. This will involve working with other developers, substructure designers, public agencies, the supply chain and port owners. There are still barriers to overcome to make this a reality but we think the economic prize for Scotland means it is worth the effort.

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