Projects worth £6.5bn to offshore wind industry pass first stage

Ministers have fired the starting gun on £6.5 billion of investment projects in ports, shipbuilding and manufacturing that could create thousands of jobs in Scotland’s offshore wind industry.

Huge infrastructure upgrades and new facilities are needed at locations around the country to support the building and assembly of equipment required for the ScotWind developments.

The offshore leasing round was first announced two years ago and hopes to bring more than 28 gigawatts of new wind generating capacity into Scottish waters in the next decade or so.

An update published on Tuesday confirms that 38 projects have made it through the first stage of what is known as the Strategic Investment Model (SIM). That is a collaboration between the Scottish government and its agencies alongside the