Scottish Government accused of 'burning through' over half of ScotWind revenue reaped from wind sites in 12 months

Ministers had been accused of selling Scotland’s offshore wind potential “on the cheap” despite a £700 million windfall from the ScotWind auction

The Scottish Government is being warned once “money is gone, it is gone”, as it was revealed it plans to spend almost half of the revenues from the ScotWind auction in just 12 months.

Seventeen offshore wind projects were awarded ten-year leases in January 2022 by Crown Estate Scotland – the first offshore wind leasing round in more than a decade.

The leases include £86 million from Shell, £85.9m each from BP and SSE, and two separate leases for £75.4m and £68.4m from Scottish Power. At the time, the sale attracted criticism because bids were capped at £100,000 per km2 in Scotland. This limited the Scottish Government’s return to just £700m.

Rights to build wind farms in Scottish waters have been sold off far too cheaply, opposition parties have argued. Picture: Ben Birchall/PA

Companies have comparatively offered an average of £361,138 per km2 in deposits alone in open market auctions for offshore wind sites in England and Wales.

The Scottish Lib Dems are now criticising the Scottish Government’s handling of this money, saying it will have already spent £310m of the revenue from the ten-year ScotWind leases in the 2023/24 financial year.

Party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “The SNP’s choices mean that Scotland has missed a big opportunity to raise revenues that could have allowed different decisions on tax and public spending. The Scottish Government sold Scotland’s prized seabed on the cheap and achieved only a fraction of the prices that are seen elsewhere in the world.

“It inexplicably capped the price that companies were allowed to pay for ScotWind sites, which botched the best chance for generations of bringing serious money into government coffers.”

Mr Cole-Hamilton added: “For years nationalist politicians have sulked that we should be more like Norway with their vast oil fund, but the first chance they get to kick start something similar, they burn through the money in record time.

“Almost half that money – £310m from the ten-year licences that were sold in the auction – will be spent in the current year alone to prop up SNP-Green spending and financial mismanagement.

“The problem is that, once that money is gone, it is gone. Those rights are sold only once.

“No annual payments exist, as happens in England, and we will be waiting for five to ten years for more money to start arriving in the form of rents on the as-yet-unbuilt wind farms.

“The Government is burning through that cash without a plan for what will happen to public services afterwards. The excuse that it is spending money on the journey to net zero does not fly when we have a budget before us that strips money out of green initiatives left, right and centre.”

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon said, at the time of announcing the ScotWind leases, the process used by the Crown Estate was “fully transparent”. She said care was needed with comparisons due to differing levels of complexities with the Scottish offering, particularly around water depth.

"There will be annual rental costs as well and if we do this correctly, which we are determined to do, then there is going to be very very significant economic benefit," she said in April 2022. “This is a massive, massive opportunity for Scotland and one that all of us should be extremely positive about.”

The Scottish Government was contacted for comment.