Green giants herald power revolution

UP TO 10 giant wind farms are to be built off the Scottish coastline as part of a revolution in providing green energy to homes and businesses throughout the country.

The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed out to the 12-mile British territorial limit, will tomorrow award "exclusivity agreements" to a range of power companies to develop 10 offshore wind farm sites.

The sites will be split evenly between the west and east coasts. Those in the west are expected to be in the relatively sheltered Irish Sea and Solway Firth areas off the south-west coast. In the east, they are likely to stretch in a line from Wick in the north to the Berwickshire coast in the south.

Each of the farms could have scores of turbines, 300ft tall, spread over several square miles of seabed.

If all 10 are built as planned, they are forecast to produce 6.4 gigawatts of power, more than doubling the amount of electricity produced by renewable forms of energy in Scotland at present and providing enough power for around four million homes.

The companies involved are understood to be some of Britain and Europe's biggest utility companies, which are likely to form consortia to exploit offshore wind power. They include Scottish and Southern, ScottishPower, Centrica, Swedish-owned Vattenfall, Germany's E.on, France's EDF, Danish company DONG, Npower and Ramco, an Aberdeen-based energy company.

The rising value of the euro means construction projects in the UK are now far cheaper than was previously the case for international consortia.

The wind farms will use undersea cables to transport their power ashore and connect to the national grid.

The advantage of siting them off south-west Scotland is that there are two existing nuclear power stations already hooked up to the grid and they are relatively close to the country's major centres of population.

The 10 exclusivity agreements are designed to allow developers to begin initial surveys and consultations on the sites, while the Scottish Government conducts an assessment of the environmental implications of siting such large structures within territorial waters.

The signing of exclusivity agreements is an important step towards realising the Scottish Government's intention of making Scotland the renewables powerhouse of Europe.

The emphasis on generating wind power is now switching offshore because of the difficulties of getting onshore wind farms through the planning process. Applications have been held up for years by objections and disputes over sites.

The new generation of offshore farms will be sited several miles out to sea, ending most objections about visual intrusion in rural areas, although developers will have to overcome concerns about wildlife movements and incursions on airport flight paths.

As the seabed owner, the Crown Estate will earn up to 2% of the value of the electricity generated, providing a lucrative annual windfall for the Treasury.

Rob Hastings, director of the Marine Estate at the Crown Estate, said: "The award of 10 exclusivity agreements is excellent news for the companies involved, the Crown Estate and for Scotland as a whole.

"We very much look forward to working with the companies on the development of these sites and the realisation of the enormous potential that these sites have to offer."

Scottish Government targets are to meet 50% of electricity demand from renewables by 2020, with an interim target of 31% by 2011.

The SNP administration at Holyrood is determined to support major renewables projects, especially offshore wind, as this is the technology that currently offers most hope of reducing the dependence on climate-changing fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, without building new nuclear power stations.