Major wind pipeline deal struck between Edinburgh renewables company and Copenhagen-based developer will see partners collaborate for five years
Danish energy company European Energy and UK renewables firm Locogen have inked a deal to build a major pipeline of onshore wind farms in Scotland over the next five years.
Announcing the tie-up last week, the partners said the venture would see them finance and develop “at least” 800MW of onshore wind, providing enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes.
“We are proud to be supporting Scottish employment and the green industry with Locogen, in whom we have found a long-term, strong development partner,” said Daniel Badcock, managing director of European Energy Development. “We look forward to delivering hundreds of megawatts of subsidy-free onshore wind projects in Scotland together over the coming years.”
The firms said the partnership would combine European Energy’s extensive clean energy development experience – it claims to have delivered more than 1GW of wind capacity across 11 countries since 2004 – with Edinburgh-based Locogen’s understanding of the Scottish energy market.
“In European Energy we have found a partner who shares our belief in the long-term value of onshore wind electricity generation in Scotland, developed responsibly with communities and our environment at heart,” said Andrew Lyle, chief executive of Logogen.
European Energy confirmed that Scotland would be the base for its “rapidly growing” UK subsidiary. “We wholeheartedly believe in the future of onshore wind in Scotland,” Badcock said.
The joint venture is the latest of a flurry of onshore wind development activity in Scotland, after the government removed a major barrier to new projects earlier this year when it announced that schemes could compete for clean power contracts alongside other clean energy technologies in future state-backed auctions. Just last week, Community Wind Power submitted an application for a 525MW wind project to Dumfries and Galloway council.
Following the government’s decision to relax the entry criteria for its Contracts for Difference renewables auction scheme, trade group RenewableUK predicted that UK onshore wind capacity will more than double over the next ten years, from the 13.6GW today to 30GW by 2030.
Green groups and the clean energy players are hopeful that the 10-point climate plan the government is scheduled to unveil this week will include policies that support an acceleration of onshore wind development, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined his intention to make the UK the “Saudi Arabia of wind power” last month.
Details of the government’s strategy for onshore wind and other clean energy technologies are also expected to be included in the Energy White Paper, the long-overdue policy document which reportedly suffered a fresh round of delays this week.
Originally due to be published in the summer of 2019, the government confirmed in September that it intended to publish the much-delayed paper in the autumn. However, reports emerged last week that the document will now be pushed back until after the Treasury’s spending review on 25 November. https://www.businessgreen.com/…/scotland-locogen…
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