Scenario mapping for offshore renewable energy development economic benefits: case studies

2. Introduction

A consideration in marine planning is the economic impacts associated with different uses. Offshore renewables are likely to become an increasingly important user of Scottish marine space and Marine Scotland wished to identify, measure and value the potential economic impact for Scotland from offshore wind and tidal energy projects. It commissioned this analysis from BVG Associates to provide an evidence base.

The approach taken was to model the delivered and potential economic impacts of major offshore renewable energy projects in Scotland using qualitative data from developers or in the public domain. It considered four projects:

• Beatrice offshore wind farm – an operational fixed-bottom offshore wind farm in the Moray Firth
• Neart na Gaoithe (NnG) – a pre-construction phase fixed-bottom offshore wind in the outer Firth of Forth.
• Hywind Scotland – an operational floating offshore wind farm located in the North Sea 25km off Peterhead, and
• MeyGen Phase 1A – an operational tidal energy project in the Sound of Stroma, near John o’Groats.

The work then analysed the present capability of the Scottish supply chain to deliver offshore renewable energy projects to establish what could have been achieved if this capability had been fully utilised. It did not consider the impact of greater utilisation of the Scottish supply chain on project cost and risk

The project identified opportunities and barriers to delivering Scottish content and makes recommendation for the future.