The Crown Estate is preparing to formally launch the leasing round for the first commercial-scale floating wind farms in the Celtic Sea off the coast of Wales and South West England later this year.
The manager of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland in May informed the market of the need of reviewing spatial constraints due to the many competing demands on the seabed. Today it said this work is ongoing.
In view of the spatial considerations, however, the Crown Estate has adapted its approach to focus on delivering the up to 4 GW of initial floating wind capacity in four project sites located in two of the shortlisted search areas published in October 2022.
With respect to its plans for the auction process, the Crown Estate said that developers will be required to recognise the key role of ports and to provide more detail on how they plan to create social and environmental value.
The Crown Estate further said it will change the auction design to increase transparency. It will adopt a ‘rising clock’ auction with pricing movements published during the different rounds, so that participants have greater transparency over whether other parties are still bidding for certain sites.
The final design of the tender and project development areas are expected to be confirmed over the summer.
The Crown Estate in the meantime continues with its efforts to accelerate and de-risk development, including by investing in various technical and environmental surveys.
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