By Kristy Dorsey
Cerulean Winds has signed an agreement that will allow it to store excess power produced at sea at onshore hydrogen facilities.
The deal with px Group, which operates some of the UK’s largest industrial facilities, will see the installation of hydrogen storage plants at sites in the north of England, north-east Scotland and Shetland. These would support proposals from Cerulean to deploy hundreds of floating wind power turbines in the North Sea in a bid to cut the bulk of emissions associated with oil and gas production.
Led by oil services entrepreneurs Dan Jackson and Mark Dixon, Cerulean is seeking to fast-track permission to install 200 floating wind turbines west of Shetland and in the Central North Sea off the Scottish mainland. These would have the capacity to produce 3GWh of power, decarbonising “the majority” of UK Continental Shelf assets with an excess of 1.5GWh diverted to the onshore plants for industrial use.
READ MORE: Huge floating windfarms could be deployed off Shetland and North East Scotland
Under the terms of the agreement, px Group will be responsible for the lease and ownership arrangements for the sites, and for obtaining planning permissions.
The overall infrastructure project, which is valued at £10 billion, depends on the grant of seabed leases from Marine Scotland. Cerulean says it need a favourable decision by the third quarter of this year to meet the timescales set out in the North Sea Transition Deal.
“Timing is absolutely crucial in this,” Mr Jackson said. “Everything hinges on those leases being granted, even conditionally, by this autumn so we can move ahead on schedule.”
He added that failure to move quickly on basin-wide decarbonisation would "wholly undermine" the objectives of the transition deal.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel