Total and Simply Blue Energy have established a partnership to develop floating offshore wind projects in the Welsh waters of the Celtic Sea.
The newly established joint venture, Blue Gem Wind, will focus on developing some of the first floating offshore wind projects with pre-commercial size, Green Giraffe, Simply Blue Energy’s sole financial advisor for floating wind projects, said.
The first development will be the 96MW Erebus demonstration project in water depths of 70m, for which an application has already been submitted to the Crown Estate.
The parties are planning to develop the project using Principle Power’s WindFloat technology, Simply Blue Energy stated.
“We are delighted to have signed the agreement with Total. Together we will progress the first stepping-stone projects that will allow the local supply chain to build up their capabilities to help deliver the larger projects that will be developed for the 2030s,” said Sam Roch-Perks , Managing Director of Simply Blue Energy.
Simply Blue Energy has established an office in Pembroke to work with the local supply chain on the opportunities created by the project.
In a recent report, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult advised that there could be as much as 50GW of electricity capacity available in the Celtic Sea in Irish and UK waters.
This is a significant amount of capacity given that the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) suggests the UK will need at least 75GW of operating offshore wind capacity to reach the net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target by 2050, Simply Blue Energy said.