The zone, located 15km off the coast of Anglesey, Wales, provides Centrica the potential to develop up to an additional 4.2GW of renewable energy.
The company said that the Irish Sea zone was its preferred location due to a combination of its close proximity to the shore, relative water depth and grid connections. It will provide diversity by being on the west coast, away from the majority of other planned UK wind farms, giving access to a different wind regime, at a different time to the majority of other sites.
Having been successful in previous licensing rounds for offshore wind, Centrica has already built and refinanced the Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms on the east coast, and expects to commence construction at the 270MW Lincs offshore wind farm development later this year. Docking Shoal and Race Bank, Centrica’s two other Round Two wind farm proposals, which are awaiting consent, could add a further 1.1GW.
Sarwjit Sambhi, managing director of Power Generation at Centrica, said: “The UK has bold carbon reduction targets and we need to take bold actions to achieve them. Developing in the Irish Sea zone could dramatically increase our renewable energy output, but offshore wind is expensive to build and we will need a long-term, stable support mechanism to make these investments commercially viable for the foreseeable future.”
Centrica has secured development support services for this project from renewables developer, the RES Group. RES has provided development support to Centrica on a number of wind farm projects, but is not an equity partner.
The company said that consultation, zone assessment and environmental impact assessments will now be carried out to establish the number of wind farm sites and locations within the zone. Once this is complete, individual site consents will be sought.
Construction is not likely to begin until at least 2016, and remains subject to a final investment decision. It is anticipated that the wind farms within the zone will be operational in time to contribute to meeting the UK’s 2020 climate change targets.
Nine seabed zones have been awarded to developers by the Crown Estate to deliver a total of around 25GW of renewable electricity. This is in addition to rounds one and two, which will deliver a total of around 8GW.
