As international delegates gather in Edinburgh for the second Scottish Low Carbon Investment (SLCI) conference today and tomorrow, a new guide published by Scottish Enterprise suggests that the knowledge and expertise of Scotland’s oil and gas industry could help reduce costs of offshore wind operations by at least 20 per cent.
The Guide to Offshore Wind and Oil and Gas Capability was produced to highlight the opportunities and benefits for the oil and gas sector from getting involved in offshore wind. It looks at the potential crossovers between the two sectors and says that the skills and expertise of the oil and gas sector could significantly reduce project development timescales and operational project costs in areas such as installation, personnel transfer and operational and maintenance activity, producing savings of £330 million in the lifetime of an offshore windfarm.
The UK, Germany and China are the three largest offshore wind markets. Over the next four years, they will collectively install 11 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity – almost 83 per cent of the total global capacity. The UK is forecast to be the largest market between now and 2015 as the UK completes the first phase of a series projects off Scottish Territorial Waters.
The first minister, Alex Salmond, said that the “inward investment announcements over the last year have underlined Scotland’s position as a leading location for the development of offshore renewable technology, building on our competitive advantage gained through decades of offshore engineering expertise from our oil and gas industry.
“As the SLCI conference returns this week, there will be further debate about how public and private sectors can work together to seize the opportunities of the burgeoning global offshore renewables industry while tackling the challenges, including driving down costs. The Guide can provide an important contribution to those discussions.”
In the view of Adrian Gillespie, director of energy and low carbon technologies at Scottish Enterprise, “with the UK offshore wind market set to grow rapidly over the next four years, and the Scottish government's ambitious renewable energy generation targets, we must ensure Scotland is best placed to capitalise on these opportunities.
“Scotland has over 40 years’ experience in the oil and gas sector, which could greatly benefit the offshore wind sector. By encouraging greater collaboration and knowledge sharing between these two important sectors, we will create a lasting and positive effect on the Scottish economy.”
The guide includes a number of case studies. One of these, the Aberdeen-based energy engineering consultancy, Xodus Group, recognised the benefits of diversifying its oil and gas roots into the offshore wind sector. Since entering the low carbon market, the company now attributes over £2 million of its turnover to the sector, and predicts this figure will rise to £10 million by 2015.
Xodus chief executive Colin Manson said that “the opportunities in the low carbon market and specifically the offshore wind sector, for oil and gas companies are vast and we anticipate our turnover to increase significantly over the next four years through greater collaboration with developers, academia and the finance sector.”
Development of the Guide to Offshore Wind and Oil and Gas Capability emerged following the oil and gas and renewable energy summit held in Aberdeen last December, which itself was a result of last year’s SLCI conference, and has been developed through extensive market research and input from industry experts.
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