The ScotWind partnership involving leading Scottish renewable energy developer SSE Renewables, Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corporation (Marubeni) and Danish fund management company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), through one of its CI funds, have today jointly submitted competitive bids into Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind seabed leasing process.

The SSE Renewables-Marubeni-CIP partnership is a highly-credible development consortium with unrivalled local and global experience as well as unparalleled technical and environmental expertise. This means it is uniquely placed to deliver on Crown Estate Scotland’s goal of securing around 10GW of new offshore wind projects in Scottish waters under the ScotWind leasing round.

The development partners are globally recognised as offshore wind pioneers who are at the forefront of commercialising technology innovation in renewables to deliver significant and enduring social, economic, and decarbonisation benefits for the countries in which they operate.

Perth-headquartered SSE Renewables already has an unrivalled track record in Scotland including the country’s largest offshore wind portfolio and is building more offshore wind energy in the world right now than any other company. Marubeni brings a wealth of sector experience of delivering floating offshore wind, including leading floating offshore wind demonstration projects in Japan with five different floating foundations. CIP has an international footprint with vast experience of delivering offshore wind across continents and has opened a global floating offshore wind competence centre in Edinburgh.

Members of the consortium already have an exemplary track record of offshore wind delivery in Scotland. SSE Renewables is part of the FTSE-listed SSE plc which has contributed more than £1billion in GVA economic contribution to Scotland in the last year, sustaining over 4,500 directly-employed workers. The Scottish renewable energy developer is currently building the 1.1GW Seagreen Offshore Wind Farm in the Firth of Forth which will be Scotland’s largest, and the world’s deepest, fixed bottom offshore wind farm when complete in 2023. Together with CIP, SSE Renewables also successfully co-developed and constructed the operational 588MW Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm, the first large-scale deep-water offshore wind development in Scotland. In the north of Scotland, CIP has outlined plans to build a floating wind farm with a capacity of up to 100 MW off the coast of Dounreay in the Pentland Firth.

These capabilities and commitments, coupled with a combined worldwide development portfolio of more than 27GW, demonstrate the SSE Renewables-Marubeni-CIP partnership’s extensive and successful track record of delivery in offshore wind, both locally and globally.

Paul Cooley, Director of Capital Projects at SSE Renewables, said: “We’re delighted our ScotWind partnership has now submitted our bids. This is the culmination of a huge amount of hard work from our team and we believe our bids demonstrate the local experience, technology and sustainability leadership, and global expertise that our partnership brings. We know ScotWind will play a pivotal role in delivering Scotland’s offshore wind target of 11GW by 2030, and we believe we’re uniquely placed to utilise our immense knowledge, experience and commitment to play a key role in helping the country lead the charge towards Net Zero.”

Hisafumi Manabe, President and CEO of Marubeni Offshore Wind Development Corporation, said: “It is great news that our unique partnership has now reached this milestone. The global sector experience we have at Marubeni Corporation, including building floating offshore wind demonstration projects in Japan, complements that of our bid partners. We are excited about the prospect of progressing projects in Scotland and look forward to the announcement of the ScotWind results in due course.”

Michael Hannibal, Partner at CIP, said: “ScotWind presents a huge opportunity for a wealth of economic benefits to be realised in Scotland with up to 10GW of new projects. We will seek to maximise the opportunities that are available to the Scottish supply chain to take part in these future projects. Our partnership is proud that we can continue to play a significant role on the pathway to net zero and ScotWind provides an important opportunity to cement Scotland’s position as a global leader in offshore wind for both fixed bottom and floating projects.”

Earlier this month the SSE Renewables-Marubeni-CIP Partnership announced that it has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Highlands and Islands for a collaboration to deliver targeted science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, research and employability initiatives to students in schools and colleges.