RENEWABLES

SCOTTISH POWER AND SHELL submit bid for offshore windfarms

Scottish Power and oil giant Shell have submitted multiple proposals for new large-scale floating offshore windfarms as part of Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind Leasing.

The companies hope their plans will create new jobs in the north-east and help the UK achieve its net-zero carbon emissions targets.

Floating offshore wind is expected to grow in the coming years as technology costs fall and is seen as more cost-effective in areas with deep waters like the North Sea.

Scottish Power chief executive, Keith Anderson, said: “Scotland is the windiest country in Europe and has the biggest and most experienced offshore sector.

“Bringing Scottish Power and Shell’s collective knowledge, experience and expertise together means we’re perfectly placed to lead the way in developing large-scale offshore floating windfarms and creating a new green industry with massive potential for exporting our skills and experience globally and helping the UK decarbonise its energy generation.

“With just a few months until the Cop26 UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, ScotWind will help create a whole new industry in floating wind that will play a crucial role in putting the country on course for a cleaner and greener future.”

Shell UK country chairman David Bunch added: “If our bid is successful, Shell and Scottish Power are fully committed to working with Scottish communities and businesses to help develop supply chains and expertise which could make Scotland a world leader in floating wind.

“At Shell we continue to grow our capacity to generate, trade and supply cleaner power to our customers and to play our part in powering the UK to net-zero.”

ScotWind Leasing is the first round of seabed leasing for offshore wind in Scottish waters in over a decade and will grant property rights for new largescale offshore wind project development, including floating wind for the first time. The companies will find out if their bids are successful early next year.

RENEWABLES JOBS 'TO GROW FIVEFOLD GLOBALLY BY 2050' as fossil-fuel industry shrinks

Global renewable energy jobs will grow fivefold from 4.4 million today to 22 million by 2050, with more than 85% of those gains in the wind and solar sectors, according to an international team of academics.

Jobs in the fossil-fuel sector will, at the same time, fall from 12.6 million to 3.1 million, with about 80% of the job losses related to oil, gas and coal extraction, the researchers write in a study published in the journal One Earth.

Overall, the number of jobs in the energy industry will grow from 18 million today to 26 million in 2050 — with 84% of those in renewables, 11% in fossil fuels and 5% in nuclear — under the report's “well-below 2°C” (WB2C) scenario.

“Climate policies are often pitted against job losses in national politics; however, our results show that, while the majority of fossil fuel jobs could be lost as those sectors decline in WB2C scenarios, in many parts of the world (although not all), these jobs could be offset by gains in renewable energy jobs,” said the report authors, which was made up of researchers from Canada’s University of British Columbia, the European Institute on Economics and the Environment in Milan, Italy, and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

“In particular, there would be a large expansion of renewable manufacturing jobs, which could lead to competition to attract and expand solar and wind industries.

“This is an important finding as current fossil-fuel dependent countries with substantial fossil-fuel extraction jobs who face job losses in sectors like coal mining or others could promote the domestic renewable energy equipment manufacturing sector to create a large number of domestic jobs.”

Regions likely to benefit from the energy transition include Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Indonesia, the US, Brazil, India, Japan and South Korea.

“In absolute terms, the Middle East and North Africa, and the US might gain over 1 million jobs in 2050 in the WB2C scenario compared with today, while other regions show more modest gains,” the report authors stated.

“In the case of these regions, future job losses are in their relatively low-job-intensity fossil-fuel sector (meaning fewer people are employed). However, these regions also have high renewable energy potential (with higher job intensities in the renewable energy sector) resulting in higher job numbers in the future overall.”

A recent report from think-tank REN21 concluded the world’s governments are missing a “civilisation changing” opportunity to switch tracks away from a fossil fuel-dominated global economy facing a climate crisis by shifting financial backing to support an accelerated build-out of renewables while turning off the taps on oil and gas.

NEPTUNE ENERGY WELCOMES SUBSIDY AWARD for offshore green hydrogen pilot

Neptune Energy today welcomed an announcement by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) to award a subsidy to the PosHYdon project, the world's first offshore green hydrogen pilot on a working platform.

The subsidy was awarded under the RVO’s Demonstration Energy and climate Innovation (DEI+) scheme, which invites funding applications for investments in renewable energy developments, including hydrogen pilots.

PosHYdon, which will be hosted on the Neptune Energy-operated Q13a-A platform, aims to validate the integration of offshore wind, offshore gas and offshore hydrogen in the Dutch North Sea. It will see the installation of a green hydrogen-producing plant on the Q13a-A platform. The plant will convert seawater into demineralised water, then into green hydrogen via electrolysis, which will be blended with natural gas and transported to shore via an existing pipeline.

Neptune Energy’s Managing Director for the Netherlands, Lex de Groot, said: “We welcome the award of this subsidy and look forward to progressing with this exciting project on our Q13a-A platform. PosHYdon will provide the insights necessary to develop large scale green hydrogen production at sea.

“The Dutch North Sea sector has an exciting future as a ‘new energy hub’ and can play a leading role in large-scale green hydrogen production for north western Europe, given its infrastructure that connects offshore

with onshore. The integration of energy systems supports net-zero goals in a smart, efficient, and costeffective manner and without disturbing existing sea ecosystems.

“The extensive infrastructure network is connected to international grids and can easily accommodate wind farms further out at sea by converting the production of green electricity into green hydrogen and transporting it to the grid onshore. PosHYdon will be the key to making this happen and we are excited to consider future opportunities that the pilot can help unlock.”

Today marks the formation of the new PosHYdon consortium, comprising Neptune Energy and partners with expertise in offshore wind, green electricity generation and hydrogen transportation.

BP NAMES IRISH SEA WIND PROJECTS amid UK clean energy drive

BP PLC on Wednesday put a name to a pair of wind farms in the Irish Sea that the oil major will operate alongside German partner Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG.

Back in February, the duo were selected as preferred bidders for two major UK offshore wind leases. In the Offshore Wind Round 4, the first UK leasing round since 2010, BP and EnBW won their bid for two leases in the Irish Sea. The leases have a combined 3 gigawatt potential generating capacity, the maximum award possible under the round's rules, plus a 60-year lease life.

The projects will be named Morgan and Mona, and BP noted they have a combined capacity strong enough to power 3.4 million UK households with clean energy.

"These leases will play a critical role in helping deliver the UK government's aim of producing enough offshore wind to power every UK home, quadrupling the country’s generating capacity to 40 gigawatts by 2030," BP Project Director Richard Haydock commented.

BP shares were 0.1% higher at 306.30 pence each in London on Wednesday morning.

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