£20 billion providing green power to platforms
Cerulean Winds kick starts
route to net zero oil and gas production
£20 billion investment
will offer basin-wide connections providing green power to platforms and
wider national grids
Cerulean Winds has
revealed plans to build the North Sea Renewables Grid (NSRG), an offshore
integrated green power and transmission system, powered by floating wind,
that oil and gas platforms will plug into for clean power.
Cerulean and partner
Frontier Power International will develop three 333km2 sites of hundreds
of floating turbines, producing multiple GW of electricity, after being
offered the lion’s share of seabed leases in the recent Crown Estate Scotland
INTOG round.
The scale and location
close together in the Central North Sea will enable a new basin-wide offshore
transmission system to be constructed which platforms can access, allowing
them to remove millions of tonnes of production emissions by trading gas
and diesel generation for a flexible, cost effective and cleaner alternative.
With its delivery consortium
of partners including NOV, Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Energy, DEME and Worley,
they will deliver one of the country’s largest infrastructure investment
projects (c£20 billion) and support the sector’s decarbonisation targets.
Phase 1 of the NSRG
will focus on oil and gas operators to support their brownfield modifications
with future phases exporting green power to the grids in southern UK and
Europe.
Dan Jackson, founding
director of Cerulean Winds said: “The oil and gas sector is wrestling
with the challenges of meeting the North Sea Transition Deal emissions
reduction targets whilst supporting UK energy security. We recognise that
to achieve meaningful reductions at the pace required, a reliable basin-wide
approach is needed that they can plug into when they are ready to for affordable
power.
“Early oil and gas
electrification supports the country’s energy security, net zero action
and delivers huge benefits to the supply chain and economy, creating 10,000
jobs. With our partners we will accelerate access to green power and provide
the infrastructure for the next phase of the North Sea’s life.”
Humza Malik, founding
partner of Frontier Power said: “Each windfarm site is located within
100km of the others and will be connected together to form the offshorering
main around the Central North Sea. A High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC)
transmission will provide availability and redundancy for maximising generation
uptime. The scale allows for offtake to other parts of the North
Sea through a new High Voltage Direct Current (HDVC) network. For the oil
and gas companies, this diversity of offtake provides robustness to the
scheme and added flexibility. For Scotland, the HVDC transmission not only
provides clean energy to the National Grid, but provides export of power
directly to continental Europe.”
Cerulean has agreed
an approach with its industrial partners early to de-risk the project in
the same way other large scale infrastructure developments are initiated.
In total, the three windfarms will contribute over £12 billion GVA to the
UK’s economy.
Mr Jackson added: “We
are targeting a build out before ScotWind developments, allowing the supply
chain to respond, creating crucial partnering opportunities for the ports
and getting the market ready to deliver floating wind at scale. It will
make a material impact on Scotland’s emissions, removing millions of tonnes
of CO2 a year to support a just transition. Basin-wide scale gives greater
flexibility, lower pricing and supply robustness. Work with end users has
begun in earnest so that we can aim for first power availability in 2028.”