Welcomes record £700m offshore windfarm lease auction

Sturgeon comments on the Scottish Crown Estate’s largest-ever auction of permits to construct offshore windfarms. £699.2 million was raised for 17 separate offshore energy projects off the east, northeast and northern coast of Scotland, to companies such as Shell, BP, SSE and Scottish Power. The developments – a combination of floating, fixed and mixed turbines – are estimated to produce almost 25,000 megawatts of energy.

It’s really hard to overstate how significant and important today’s announcement is for Scotland’s energy, environmental and economic future. This gives us the potential to meet our own energy needs from renewable sources. It’s going to position Scotland as a major exporter of green energy, green hydrogen as well – and delivers massive economic benefits as well as the revenues that will flow to the Scottish government. The estimate is that for every gigawatt of power generated from these projects in due course, there will be a billion pounds of investment in the supply chain and that has the potential to create thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of jobs. So, as we make this transition to net-zero to meet the climate emergency, this helps ensure Scotland can do that in a fair and a just way that creates new jobs to replace those in oil and gas, for example, which we are in the process of transitioning away from. This is perhaps one of the biggest, most significant days in terms of Scotland’s energy and industrial future that we’ve had in a very, very long time. Really exciting