Scottish ports need to cooperate to unlock offshore wind potential

Greater cooperation between ports is needed to help the Scottish supply chain take advantage of the coming offshore wind boom.

With various ports across the north-east vying to service multiple upcoming projects, COWI director of energy and marine Ian Mockett warned that this could undermine Scotland’s local supply chain.

“Everyone’s fighting for the same thing,” he said. “We have a huge amount of competition in the industry, but what we should be doing is working out how to deliver net zero.”

Scotland and the UK in general are preparing for a spate of offshore wind farms, with around 10GW of capacity set to roll out through the ScotWind leasing round alone over the next decade.

While it offers a massive opportunity for the ports, it will also put pressure on them due to infrastructure requirements.

“If businesses worked together, we’d all get the rates of returns that we needed and we would deliver much faster,” Mockett said.

Green Volt

The recent approval of Flotation Energy and Vargronn’s up-to-560MW Green Volt floating offshore wind farm represents one of the opportunities this boom could provide the Scottish supply chain.

While Flotation Energy said it wants to encourage the Scottish supply chain, general manager Barry MacLeod hopes that “these ports will be ready and have the ability to provide the services that we need”.

The question remains about how Scottish ports can prepare to seize this opportunity of offshore wind.

“For me, it’s about getting a strategic plan for the nation of how we’re going to deliver net zero,” Mockett said.

“But that’s easier said than done, because the more you go beyond clusters, you get more stakeholders, and then some of those stakeholders will have conflicts.”

The importance of working together has not gone unrecognised. Multiple ports from across Scotland, including Nigg, Cromarty Firth and Aberdeen, recently came together to form the Scottish Offshore Wind Ports Alliance (SOWPA).

This aims to take a more coordinated approach to port development, helping Scotland’s offshore wind supply chain take advantage of the country’s projects.

“The real challenge is that a lot of these ports are owned privately or within a trust,” Mockett said.

“They want a clear line of sight of where that business is going to come from and who’s going to give that business before they start investing.”

Investment

Taking advantage of the offshore wind boom won’t come cheap. An estimated £3.45bn of port investment is needed if the UK wants to deliver its ambition of installing 5GW of floating wind capacity by 2030.

This need has been recognised across the political spectrum. Labour recently pledged to invest £1.8bn in the UK’s port infrastructure and establish a National Wealth Fund to invest in green industries, including the planned port upgrades.

Former SNP leader Humza Yousaf previously hinted at upcoming investment in Scotland’s port facilities to support the offshore wind sector.

The UK Government-owned UK Infrastructure Bank has also said it will buy stakes in the floating wind ports.

But there is still a great deal of work to be done to prepare Scotland, and the UK’s, port facilities if they want to get a meaningful share of floating offshore wind boom.

“In terms of port investment, it’s not just upgrading the port or the infrastructure, but thinking about what does that port bring to the area,” Mockett said.

“And that has to be done in a very strategic way – each port can’t build their business around doing everything and competing with a port that’s five miles up the coast.”

European approach

Mockett pointed to similar cooperation going on in the North Sea between countries like Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, which are working collectively to deliver offshore wind in the North Sea.

“The port of Esbjerg might specialise in one thing while Rotterdam and Hamburg doing their own specialities,” Mockett said.

This could help remedy what UK Offshore Wind Champion Tim Pick dubbed as a “national disgrace,” when a turbine broke down at the Kincardine floating wind farm and another had to undergo scheduled maintenance.

Instead of travelling 10 miles to nearby Aberdeen, they had to go hundreds of miles to Rotterdam as no sufficient repair facilities exist in the UK.

“It feels that we don’t completely have that approach in the UK and Scotland, where, because the ownership is a bit more private trust-based, there’s no real desire for collaboration.”

With the first wave of projects due online towards the end of the decade, it is important to act soon to ensure the port capacity is available when developers need it.

“In order to capture the opportunity, we need to be developing the infrastructure now,” Mockett said.

“A big worry for me as a professional in the industry is if miss the boat. We need to start developing some of these things now to capture when we actually need them to be available.

“If not, then you may get situations where European ports will take those opportunities because they’ve invested and they’re ready to take them.”