Re-industrialisation of Scotland faces turbulence
◆ Wind of change needed for Scottish ports to meet their offshore ambitions writes Jeremy Grant
For people in the offshore wind sector, Scotland is – to borrow from the title of Billy Connolly’s autobiography – “windswept and interesting”.
The North Sea is one of the windiest places on earth and, two years on from the award of licences to build an armada of offshore wind farms there to harness this natural resource under the vast Scotwind project, there is some evidence that the wheels of progress (if not yet the turbines) are turning.
Last week, a group was shown some of that progress, across from the Royal Yacht Britannia’s berth at Port of Leith. The facility’s owner, Forth Ports, has transformed an ancient port tracing its roots to the 14th century into a renewables hub capable of handling the demands of a net zero world.
This has involved converting quayside on a 175-acre site into zones for storage and assembly of wind turbines – blades, the steel towers they are attached to, and electronic switching gear. A revamped berth jutting into the Forth estuary will be able by August to accommodate the world’s largest offshore wind installation vessels that carry this kit out to sea for deployment.
Ports are vital in the offshore wind ecosystem because, as Claire Mack, chief executive of Scottish Renewables, told the group: “They are the industrial hubs for everything we want to deliver in terms of Scotland’s renewable future.”
Yet the next day, at an offshore wind conference in Glasgow, came a reality check.
While shovels have been in the ground creating these industrial hubs, including in the Cromarty Firth, at Aberdeen and Dundee, delegates heard there simply isn’t enough money yet being invested in port conversion on a scale needed to meet anticipated demand from Scotwind for quayside wind turbine assembly – known as marshalling – and vessel berthing.
And the scale required is unfathomably large. Siemens-gamesa, a wind turbine manufacturer, has designed a 108-metre blade for the Moray West offshore wind farm. That’s longer than Wembley Stadium. The project’s scope calls for 180 of them, for 60 turbines.
While Forth Ports has been an early mover with its £50 million investment in the expansion at Leith, the bottom line is that billions more will be needed if most of the Scotwind projects are to come on stream as planned from 2030.
A lot of this is down to confidence. And 2023 was a year of that being punctured by inflation and commodity prices, buffeting offshore wind developers. Then there was the failure of the UK government’s subsidy auction. There is already a reckoning: I am told that one Scotwind project is among three offshore wind projects that have since been put on hold.
More capital will be needed, urgently. It will require sovereign wealth fund involvement, as well as a blend of private infrastructure finance and government guarantees. But time is short. At stake is nothing less than the re-industrialisation of Scotland and its potential to be the global hub for offshore wind expertise.