Floating Offshore Wind Conference: First Minister's speech - 9 October 2024

It’s a great pleasure to be in the city of Aberdeen and have the opportunity to take part in the Floating Offshore Wind conference. I’m delighted to see such a huge degree of engagement and involvement in this important and dynamic sector of the Scottish economy.

Aberdeen has built a reputation over many centuries as a focal point of innovation and creativity in academia, life sciences expertise, oil and gas, and in the world of artist and creative development. Amongst other things, it has been the home to new and emerging technologies, and the home to the world's first hydrogen-powered double decker buses.

Now, we find ourselves here, gathering in Aberdeen, as it emerges to the fore of further innovation in the energy sector in Scotland and the innovation that will fuel our economy in the years to come.

Centre-stage in Aberdeen is the renewables revolution and the developments that we’re all focused on today around floating offshore wind. It’s a great privilege to be part of the conversation about how we take forward these exciting opportunities in Scotland and in Aberdeen.

There’s a lot happening in this area of activity. Last month, I had the great pleasure of attending the opening of Ocean Winds outstanding new operations base at Buckie Harbour, just along the coast from where we are in today, which will service the offshore wind farms at Moray West and Moray East.

The base is employing local people who will go out to wind farms to service the turbines, and be able to return home to their families at the end of their day.

What intrigued me about the team that were taking forward the agenda at Ocean Winds was that they were a combination of tremendously skilled individuals, some of whom had been involved in oil and gas, some had a background in the military, or trades and development expertise.

What was exciting about the development there was that all these various skills and different backgrounds were coming together to realise the exciting new opportunities in the offshore wind sector.

This opportunity is present with us now. The challenge is to make sure we seize that opportunity to the best of our ability to make sure that the developments we’re talking about here today have a profound impact on employment and economic opportunities in our communities, so people have good sustainable employment and make a contribution to our communities as a consequence of economic activity, and so we can all see the benefits and the value of renewables, in particular of floating offshore wind.

I cannot stress enough to you today the importance of offshore wind to my vision of Scotland’s future as a diverse, modern and dynamic country.

The Scottish Government has made clear its intention of developing this area of policy at the heart of our combined agenda for delivering economic growth and travelling successfully to net zero.

At the heart of the Programme for Government that I set out to Parliament in September is a determination to make progress on core strategic themes in our policy – eradicating child poverty, improving economic growth, the journey to net zero and improving our public services. We need to have strong economic growth to fuel our ambitions for the transition to net zero, eradicating child poverty and improving public services.

Right at the heart of Government policy is the importance we attach to making sure we have a successful agenda on the development of economic opportunity and some of the greatest economic opportunities are in offshore wind.

To reinforce that, the Government has put its money where its mouth is by committing £500 million of strategic investment in the infrastructure and manufacturing facilities crucial to the growth of this world-leading sector over the next five years.

What I would like you to take from those comments are two things. First of all, that there’s absolute policy certainty from the Scottish Government - just as there was policy certainty for many years around onshore wind - around offshore wind opportunities, of which floating wind is a crucial part. Secondly, we will put in place the investment, resources and support to realise those ambitions and those aspirations.

That is an invitation to industry to collaborate with government, collaborate with academic, collaborate with all interested private sector partners to realise the opportunities in Scotland today.

What we’re doing in Government is taking a series of decisions to support that development, for example working in partnership with Haventus, the UK investment bank and the Scottish National Investment Bank to support the development of the Ardersier port near Inverness.

An oil and gas facility that has lain dormant for the best part of 20 years will now be redeveloped as a base for offshore wind developments. It’s a huge opportunity, a huge strategic investment, supporting our investment package from the Scottish Government and what we’re trying to put in place to realise the significant opportunities and turn them into a practical reality.

That's one example of how we’re using our investment and resources, but there’s also a necessity to make sure we take the best and most effective decisions to encourage the development of the sector. I’m confident the Scottish Government is focused on having the vision and the dynamic consenting regime that will support the market and allow decisions to be taken in an orderly fashion to allow development to take its course.

That symmetry between planning and consenting decisions and the path to investment is critical to secure confidence and investment in the necessary projects.

What I would want to assure you of is that right at the heart of our policy is a determination to play our part in making sure that we realise those opportunities and possibilities.

And from my Government’s perspective, I can tell you what’s next.

In my Programme for Government last month, I set out the ambition to double Scotland’s renewable electricity capacity, providing yet more certainty for investors.

And our Green Industrial Strategy, published last month, puts offshore wind front and centre, as Scotland’s greatest opportunity to elevate our investment profile.

Offshore wind isn’t just part of the plan, it’s the key to unlocking a new chapter of Scottish prosperity in the 21^st century – helping us to generate the wealth to achieve the social objectives that I have set out.

The destination is clear. We are intent on attracting global investment, building a strong domestic supply chain, and securing our place as Europe’s green energy supplier, with all the opportunities that will flow from that.

The wealth generated through renewable energy will create ripple effects across Scotland, but that will only happen if we have effective collaboration between Government and industry as we work together to pursue these objectives.

As the sector grows, I want it to be with one purpose: to create the profits and the partnership to support our economic transformation and to make Scotland a successful, world-leading wellbeing economy.

Clearly there is much work to be done. This Government is moving quickly to finalise an updated Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy in 2025.

We must work with care to bring stakeholders together to create effective marine spatial planning. We look to industry to work closely with us to achieve that objective.

We are taking rapid action to streamline the consenting process to maximise the potential for projects to progress.

We’re also using the £500 million in strategic investment we have committed over five years:

• to strengthen the offshore wind supply chain
• to support the offshore wind sector
• and to attract private sector investment in our ports, manufacturing and fabrication facilities

So, I am pleased to announce that we have already agreed on the first tranche of funding for key projects, with commercial discussions progressing quickly.

This strategic investment will have the effect of leveraging private investment and provide further market certainty.

I want us to work together to make Scotland the most attractive place in the world for supply chain investment, and for that the next few years are crucial. We’ve got a unique opportunity to keep part of the global renewables sector here and we will seize that opportunity.

I was particularly pleased to welcome the announcement that GB Energy will be headquartered in Aberdeen.

GB Energy and the UK Government’s National Wealth Fund provide us with further opportunities to leverage investment into the sector and combine with the existing investment commitments that we in the Scottish Government have made to support the development of wider infrastructure and support the supply chain.

I’ve already been involved in very detailed discussions with Juergen Maier, the chair of GB Energy, and the Scottish Government will work collaboratively with Juergen and GB Energy to realise the benefits of access to further investment opportunities to ensure we maximise the impact of that here in Scotland.

Our expertise is rightly attracting substantial investment. With further detailed discussions about commercial opportunities, I am certain that Scotland will reap the rewards of the investment opportunities I have set out today.

We have to make sure, as we undertake all this activity, that we take people with us. We’ve got to make sure that communities are very much a part of the journey we are on, that they see the economic and social benefits of investment - the creation of employment, the generation of sustainable opportunities in this part of the country as we transition to net zero and the investment that is being undertaken to ensure we have a package that addresses fuel poverty and the concerns that members of the public have about the prevalence of that within our society. We must make sure that we advance on that question.

The Scottish Government will be taking forward a public consultation this year on community benefits to ensure people feel they are part of the process we are all involved in.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, I think there are enormously exciting opportunities for Scotland as a consequence of offshore wind and particularly floating offshore wind. I want to assure you of the policy certainty of the Scottish Government.

I think we’re in a stronger place now that we have policy alignment with the aspirations of the United Kingdom Government. We are engaged in substantive discussions with the United Kingdom Government to make sure we use that policy alignment to maximum effect to create certainty, enable the investment and take the decisions that will create the conditions for the use of various vehicles of investment to make some of these developments possible.

The Scottish Government will play our part in bringing investment opportunities to the market to enable that to happen. That will hopefully create the certainty required to deliver private sector investment, then we can seize the possibilities and opportunities. Scotland has generation of energy possibilities ahead of us which will enable us to be at the leading edge, for example, of the hydrogen sector, and allow us to meet our objectives on the journey to net zero.

That exciting agenda is one that only comes about when we are able to have policy certainty, when we’re able to have Government and industry collaboration, and when we’re able to have secure investments for projects and the supply chain.

We are seized of the need to make sure all that is possible and I look forward very much to working with you to make sure we realise all of those possibilities for the benefit of Scotland, and to contribute to the interventions needed to tackle the climate crisis which is such a significant factor in the lives of all of us.