Blue Gem Wind, the joint venture between Total, one of the world’s largest energy companies, and Simply Blue Energy has welcomed the announcement from The Crown Estate to create new floating wind leasing opportunities in the Celtic Sea.

Blue Gem Wind is progressing the Celtic Sea’s first floating wind project, Erebus, a 96MW test and demonstration project 45 kilometres off the coast of Pembrokeshire. It also submitted an Environmental Scoping Report for Valorous, a proposed Celtic Sea 300MW floating wind farm in February.

Mike Scott, Project Managing Director, said,

“We welcome the news that The Crown Estate is launching a leasing process for the Celtic Sea to deliver early-commercial projects up to 300MW. We believe that a stepping stone approach to the development of floating wind in the Celtic Sea in the 2020’s brings clear benefits. Starting with demonstration and early-commercial projects, increasing in size, will help to capture the highest local supply chain content for the large scale projects in the 2030s. ”

The Celtic Sea is poised to play a key role in Net Zero, the Committee on Climate Change’s 100GW offshore wind target, and crucially, the UK Government’s target of 1 GW of floating wind by 2030. The ORE Catapult also estimated that the first GW of floating wind in the Celtic Sea could potentially deliver over 3,000 jobs and £682m in supply chain opportunities for Wales and Cornwall by 2030.