ScotWind: Mingyang Smart Energy wind power project creates double-edged dilemma over security

When the West of Orkney Wind Farm received planning permission from the Scottish government last month, it was a rare bright spot for a sector that’s been bruised by global economic headwinds and domestic regulatory uncertainty for over a year.

The decision marks a key step forward in the project’s plan for 125 wind turbines to be fixed to the seabed about 30 kilometres west of the Orkney mainland, allowing the generation of enough electricity to power two million homes.

It also makes West of Orkney the first of 20 wind farms – collectively known as ScotWind – to be given such consent since Crown Estate Scotland awarded options to develop seabed acreage in the North Sea in 2022.

The granting of onshore consent is a significant planning milestone for the Muir Mhòr Offshore Wind Farm project.

Yet while the decision will be welcomed by the project’s backers – TotalEnergies of France, Renewables Infrastructure Development Group of the UK, and Corio Generation, part of Australia’s Macquarie – the mood among most of the other ScotWind developers is anxious.

That’s because, a thousand miles away in London, consent of a different kind is pending that has greater consequences for the future of ScotWind. Westminster has for months been grappling with whether to allow a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer, Mingyang Smart Energy, to build a wind turbine blade factory in the Inverness area. The deliberations have widened to whether the Chinese company’s kit should be used in the UK’s offshore wind supply chain at all.

The case in favour is economically compelling. Mingyang, like many businesses in China’s green tech juggernaut, produces turbines more cheaply than its European rivals. Mingyang’s factory would also create hundreds of green jobs in the North-east of Scotland. Small wonder that Holyrood has earmarked £30 million for the project. The investment from Mingyang would be around £120m, attractive for Labour as it tries to attract foreign investment.

The case against boils down to two issues: perceived security threats to the UK’s critical national energy infrastructure and supply chain dependency.

An aerial view shows wind turbine blades stored on the quayside ready for shipping at the Siemens Gamesa blade factory in Hull. Picture: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images

Concerns have been raised by MPs including Andrew Bowie, Nick Timothy, Christine Jardine and Harriet Cross that because the operational software embedded in a turbine remains in the control of the manufacturer after installation, the risk exists that a wind farm using Chinese turbines could be switched off, causing damage to downstream transmission and grid. Cyber espionage is another worry.

Germany has already raised a red flag. A paper commissioned from the German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies by the country’s defence ministry this year said that the Waterkant wind farm off the German coast should not go ahead on the grounds of public safety, citing planned use of Chinese wind turbines.

For anyone who still thinks this is far-fetched, it’s worth reading two recently published government policy documents that lay out the stark geopolitical reality of our times. China is assessed in the Strategic Defence Review as a “sophisticated and persistent challenge”, while the National Security Strategy says: “Economic coercion will become more common as other states weaponise trade or use export controls and supply chain dependencies to gain advantage."

Dependency stems from the fact that more than 60 per cent of ScotWind’s wind farms are designed to be floating units in deep waters, unlike the fixed bottom technology used by West of Orkney.

Mingyang specialises in floating turbines. The only other manufacturers in the game, Vestas and Siemens-Gamesa, are too financially constrained to develop floating turbines at scale any time soon. They are also busy fulfilling existing orders for fixed-bottom projects. This means that, without Mingyang, much of ScotWind is less likely to materialise, jeopardising the UK’s overall offshore wind targets.

The government now finds itself on the horns of a geopolitical dilemma. Sir Keir Starmer, on whose desk the Mingyang decision likely now sits, must now navigate between the White House’s antipathy towards wind power – expressed yesterday in the gutting of Biden-era tax credits for wind and solar in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” – and China’s desire to expand its wind power champions in Europe.

Tension flared last month when China’s embassy in London slammed as “groundless” any “so-called security concerns” over the use of Chinese wind equipment in the UK’s energy infrastructure. This came after a report that Washington had warned London about national security risks associated with allowing Mingyang to build a plant in the UK.

The dilemma is complicated by the fact that another Scottish offshore wind project, Green Volt, backed by Eni of Italy and Tokyo Electric Power Company, reportedly intends to use Mingyang turbines. It was the only successful bidder from Scotland at the last government auction that allocates offtake prices, meaning it is well advanced.

Allowing Mingyang in with technical and legal safeguards would be one option. Another would be to incentivise Vestas and Siemens-Gamesa to ramp up floating wind turbine technology, providing more flexibility to developers. I understand one measure under consideration is sweetening the terms of the next auction to make it more viable to incorporate Siemens-Gamesa turbines in project plans.

Germany might also look at channelling some of the up to €1 trillion recently approved as part of relaxing the “debt brake” to upgrade its military and infrastructure for its own offshore wind champion, Siemens-Gamesa.

What is clear is the commercial pressures felt by wind farm developers cannot be blindly prioritised over long-term security issues. Whether we like it or not, energy infrastructure is inextricably linked to national security. Times have changed.