THE building blocks for an immense renewable energy project off Scotland stand on the quayside, waiting like impatient giants.
Foundations for the huge Seagreen offshore windfarm, which will be the deepest tethered in the world, are gathered at the marshalling port at the Port of Nigg in the Highlands.
The windfarm destination is located 27km off the coast of Angus on Scotland’s east coast.
They are about to begin their journey out into the North Sea, where they will support the generation of enough clean electricity to power 1.6m homes.
When complete, each structure will be 280m tall, almost as high as the Shard building, the UK’s tallest building.
Seagreen is a 1.1Gw £3bn joint venture between SSE Renewables, the UK’s largest renewables developer, and TotalEnergies.
Seagreen will be Scotland’s largest offshore wind as well as the deepest in the world attached to the seabed, when it is complete in 2023.
Alistair Phillips-Davies, SSE chief executive, said: “Projects like Seagreen show we are entering a golden age for clean energy in this country.
“Recent debate has focused on whether the next Prime Minister will support net zero as an environmental policy. Seagreen shows that net zero isn’t just about climate change."
He added: "It’s about creating jobs, delivering major clean infrastructure, regenerating rural communities and ultimately helping us secure our own energy future and reduce our reliance on imported gas. Those are things we should all be on board with.”
SSE is on track to invest £24bn in communities across Great Britain this decade, playing a key role in extending the UK’s global leadership in clean energy and ensuring homegrown energy benefits consumers and communities up and down the country.
“There’s lots of talk about delivering homegrown energy and what we need now is action,” said Phillips-Davies.
“As well as Seagreen, we are building the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Dogger Bank, off the coast of Yorkshire; and what will be one of Europe’s most productive onshore wind farms, Viking, on Shetland, as we increase our renewables output fivefold by 2031.”
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