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Energy4All welcomes success of Scotwind bid

Energy4All welcomes success of Scotwind bid

Energy4All is celebrating a major success for the community energy sector in the UK as set out in the press release by the partnership below.

Climate breakdown is the key environmental challenge facing our society. If we are to successfully decarbonize our economy, we must rapidly replace polluting fossil fuels with clean power. This requires us to generate much more zero carbon electricity to heat our homes and power our vehicles.  We need the public to support those changes, and we believe one of the best ways of ensuring that support is to allow individuals to have a share in those projects.

Falck Renewables has a 15-year track record of working with Energy4All having successfully set up seven co-operatives at its Scottish onshore wind farms, enabling thousands of people to buy a stake in their local wind farm.

We think partnerships of this sort could be a model for other offshore projects in both the UK and the rest of Europe.

Falck
Blue Float

The Falck Renewables and BlueFloat Energy partnership taking part in the current ScotWind offshore wind leasing round is celebrating the success of three of its bids to secure seabed leases for sites which lend themselves to the deployment of large-scale floating wind technology in Scotland.

Two of the partnership’s proposed projects - a site east of Aberdeen in Plan Option E1 and a site north of Fraserburgh in Plan Option NE6 have been granted leases from Crown Estate Scotland - along with a proposed site east of Caithness in Plan Option NE3 which will be developed by a consortium of Falck Renewables, BlueFloat Energy and Ørsted. The three areas could accommodate a total of approximately 3.0 GW of offshore wind capacity with the projects scheduled to be operational by the end of the decade, subject to securing consent, commercial arrangements and grid connections.

The successful bids combined BlueFloat Energy’s knowledge and experience in developing, financing and executing offshore wind projects with Falck Renewables’ strong track record of global project development and over 15 years of community engagement in Scotland.

Carlos Martin, CEO of BlueFloat Energy, said: “The Scottish coastline is ideal for developing offshore wind projects and our team is thrilled to be given the opportunity to deploy our expertise to deliver these projects in Scotland. The potential for boosting the economy and reinforcing Scotland’s position at the forefront of the energy transition is huge. We have already carried out extensive work on mapping out the Scottish supply chain and now look forward to ensuring we work with as many local companies as possible.”

Toni Volpe, CEO of Falck Renewables, said: “We are delighted that our applications have won the support of Crown Estate Scotland and that our offshore wind projects will be making a considerable contribution to providing Scotland with clean energy. Falck Renewables has a worldwide renewables portfolio and with our growth strategy we are on track to facilitate the global transition to a low carbon future.”

Richard Dibley, Managing Director of Falck Renewables Wind Ltd, said: “We are hugely excited about the positive impact these projects will have on the whole of Scotland in terms of creating jobs, economic benefit and helping to achieve a net zero future. Over the past 15 years we have seen communities empowered with the help of the financial support they have received from our onshore wind farms and we look forward to sharing the benefits of offshore wind with local communities.”

The Falck Renewables, BlueFloat Energy, Ørsted consortium has already begun work with community ownership experts Energy4All on a new framework which will allow residents of Scotland and Scottish communities to share the financial benefits of the offshore wind energy projects the consortium plans to build in the future.

As part of the preparatory work to deliver the offshore wind projects the consortium will collaborate with Energy Skills Partnership Scotland (ESP) to help train up a skilled workforce in time for construction to begin.

Research will also be carried out with the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) to investigate the potential effects of floating offshore wind developments on the marine environment. Projects under discussion will examine how fishing interests and offshore wind can work together and study the interaction of fish, marine mammals and seabirds with floating offshore wind farms.

Rumbling Bridge Donates £21,000 to local village halls and events

Rumbling Bridge Donates £21,000 to local village halls and events

Rumbling Bridge Community Hydro Society has awarded a total of £21,000 in grants to local facilities and events from its surplus profits made in 2020/21. Grants ranging from £500 to £5,000 were awarded to the Crook of Devon Hall, the Coronation Hall in Muckhart, the Moubray Hall in Powmill Fossoway Church Hall and Muckhart Parish Church Hall. The Muckhart Horticultural Society and the Fossoway Flower Show also benefited.

These grants are to support local village halls and events which have been adversely affected by a lack of income due to difficulties caused by the Covid pandemic restrictions.

Hugh Wallace, Chair of the Rumbling Bridge Community Hydro Society Board said: “We are delighted to have been able to award these grants. This brings the total donated to local community projects by the Society to over £100,000 since the hydro scheme launched in 2016.”

Energy4All Joins Partnership in bid to Take Community Ownership Offshore

Orsted
Falck
Print
Blue Float

Energy4All Joins Partnership in bid to Take Community Ownership Offshore

Falck Renewables, Ørsted and BlueFloat Energy partner with Energy4All to explore innovative community ownership schemes for offshore wind 

Inverness, UK, 27 September 2021 – The Falck Renewables, Ørsted and BlueFloat Energy consortium bidding in the latest ScotWind leasing round has joined forces with community ownership experts Energy4All to champion inclusive opportunities for Scottish communities to own a stake in offshore wind developments.

Energy4All has signed an exclusive Memorandum of Understanding to co-operate in the delivery and execution of a community ownership scheme which will start by carrying out a public consultation and designing a new framework allowing residents of Scotland and Scottish communities to share the financial benefits of the floating wind farms the consortium has applied to build.

Falck Renewables has a 15-year track record of working with Energy4All having successfully set up eight co-operatives at its Scottish onshore wind farms, enabling thousands of people to buy a stake in their local wind farm.

Set up in 2002 to allow communities to own and operate their own renewable energy schemes, Energy4All now supports more than 30 successful community energy co-operatives in the UK with 17,000 members.  They have raised over £80 million from their members to invest in wind, solar, hydro and bio-mass schemes.

Richard Dibley, managing director of Falck Renewables Wind Ltd, said: “Our ethos has always been to share the value generated from our onshore wind farms as widely as we can with local communities. For us it really makes sense to extend that approach to offshore wind and our MOU with Energy4All is the first step in understanding how involving local communities in owning offshore developments might work.

“Local people own a stake in eight of our Scottish wind farms through co-operatives and the community of Fintry also own a turbine at our Earlsburn Wind Farm which we operate on their behalf.  These innovative schemes have evolved over time but have ensured that communities across the country have benefitted from onshore wind energy and we are now committed to extending that to offshore wind.”

Marna McMillin, Chief Executive of Energy4All, said: “Energy4All is thrilled to be partnering in this exciting new venture for community owned wind energy in Scotland.  Following the launch, capital raise and operation of eight community co-operatives with stakes in Falck wind farms, and joint wind projects with other developers, this is an opportunity for us to build on that knowledge and experience to take community ownership to another level.”

Carlos Martin, CEO of BlueFloat Energy said: “We are delighted to have Energy4All onboard to jointly explore a pioneering approach towards community engagement in the context of offshore wind farms, an uncharted territory to date. We are committed to bringing genuine community involvement and ownership into offshore wind for the first time ever in an offshore wind development. Offshore wind has the potential to benefit local communities in many different ways but we are keen to explore how we can open up these large-scale projects to direct economic participation from local people. Having a stake in a project would allow people to really feel that they are part of the story and share in the project’s success.  We are also adopting this approach in our offshore wind project development activities in other countries where it has received a fair amount of interest and positive reaction from local communities.”

Duncan Clark, Head of UK Region for Orsted, said: “We are committed to delivering a green energy transformation that benefits local communities where we construct and operate our offshore wind farms. To this end, we are delighted to have agreed this MOU with Energy4All to see how we can build on this approach in Scotland.”

The consultation is set to begin in North-East Scotland in October to gather the views of communities on how they can be best served by offshore wind farms in terms of potential investment schemes or community ownership opportunities.

The consultation will build on initial discussions on community engagement in offshore wind at a March 2021 Falck Renewables and BlueFloat Energy sponsored event organized by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) which resulted in an SCDI report “Harnessing Value for Scotland from Offshore Wind Development” (https://www.scdi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/SCDI-Falck-BlueFloat-Report.pdf).