By Mark McDonald, Stakeholder Lead – Green Volt offshore windfarm
As offshore wind development accelerates across the North Sea, strategically important collaboration between developers is emerging to help manage shared infrastructure, land access and engineering challenges.
Mark leads stakeholder engagement for the Green Volt floating offshore wind project, working with industry, regulators and communities to support the delivery of offshore energy infrastructure in the north-east of Scotland.
Before I go any further, I suspect a few eyebrows may be raised by what I’m covering here. Offshore wind is a competitive environment and every developer has their own projects to deliver, their own shareholders to answer to and their own timelines to meet. Historically, we’re not typically known for sitting around the table discussing how we can help each other succeed, but bear with me — as the scale of what we’re delivering means we are now thinking about development a little differently.
”Representatives across different projects are coming together, sharing their challenges and being open about working out issues collaboratively. For this, I'm thankful as it shows how our industry is evolving as being truly delivery focussed."
Mark McDonaldStakeholder Lead - Green Volt offshore windfarm
Around key infrastructure areas, both offshore and onshore, multiple projects are now progressing within the same geography and often within similar timelines. Offshore wind, interconnectors, carbon capture and electrification projects are all looking to utilise the same coastal infrastructure around areas such as Peterhead, north of Aberdeen bringing interactions both at sea and where cables come ashore.
The level of development brings enormous opportunity for the UK’s energy transition, and it also means projects are increasingly interacting with one another as they move through development.
As offshore wind continues to scale across the North Sea, projects cannot continue to develop in isolation.
Developers already consider interactions and cumulative effects with other projects through the rigorous consenting process. However, we are now starting to see through collaboration between developers an opportunity to take that a step further — sharing information earlier to streamline development and working together more proactively as projects progress. This is of particular importance when we look at offshore export cable routing. As multiple projects design routes towards the same stretch of coastline, those routes inevitably begin to interact with one another.
A busy Peterhead harbour
Cable corridors
If you overlay many of the consented cable corridors heading towards the same coastline today, the map can start to resemble ‘a spaghetti junction’, with multiple routes crossing each other several times. In reality, that kind of layout simply isn’t workable when projects move towards construction.
The industry therefore needs to better align on routing options so that projects can avoid unnecessary asset crossings, reduce interactions and ultimately ensure everyone can deliver on time, with disruption to stakeholders in local areas kept to a minimum. Mechanisms already exist within the consenting process, such as consent variations, which developers can use to refine offshore cable routes as projects progress. These are exactly the kinds of challenges developers are now starting to discuss more openly with one another.
Peterhead Developer Forum
An example of how these conversations are taking shape is through the Peterhead Developer Forum (PDF). Established in January 2023, the forum brings together developers whose projects are expected to connect into the Peterhead area, including offshore wind projects from the INTOG and ScotWind leasing rounds alongside transmission and wider energy infrastructure developments.
Meeting monthly, the forum provides a space for developers to share high-level project information, understand where interactions may occur and engage with regulators and local authorities responsible for managing the wider system.
Over the past year, I’ve been taking an active role moving the forum beyond discussion and towards practical collaboration by bringing together engineers, land teams, project managers and commercial to collectively approach shared opportunities and challenges on the ground.
Front-runner project
Green Volt is currently one of the few offshore wind projects connecting into the Peterhead area that has secured a Contracts for Difference (CfD) from UK Government. While this provides important certainty for the project, it also places clear delivery timelines on us and means we are slightly further ahead in development than some other projects in the area.
Being further advanced in development means we are moving at pace to build a clearer understanding of the ground and seabed conditions that will ultimately shape how infrastructure is delivered. Because of this, we have already carried out detailed ground investigation surveys along parts of the onshore cable corridor. In many cases, at this stage developers wouldn’t normally have this level of site information yet. These surveys are expensive and typically kept within a project because they directly inform how cables are designed and installed. However, if collaboration is going to work, it makes sense to share what we can — so we have started sharing insights from this work with developers we are interacting with in the area.
We are also exploring how seabed survey data offshore can be better utilised between projects. By sharing our understanding of seabed conditions, developers can work from a more consistent picture of the environment they are building in. In some cases this could also help reduce repeated survey activity in the same areas and minimise disruption to other marine users, including the fishing community.
”If the UK is to deliver Net Zero at scale and at pace, coordination and collaboration between developers will need to become a far more normal part of how projects are developed.”
Mark McDonaldStakeholder Lead – Green Volt offshore windfarm
Collaboration is also starting to extend into how we think about land access and how we can minimise disruption to local communities. Every developer needs land rights to install underground cables, and Green Volt is no exception.
In some locations, Green Volt is already well progressed with land rights along parts of the onshore corridor, and we are now exploring where it may be possible to adjust or release parts of those rights to enable other developers to bring their cables ashore. From a practical perspective, this is about coordinating infrastructure more effectively so that other projects can progress, rather than each developer trying to solve the same challenge independently.
This is exactly the type of shared approach the industry will need if multiple projects are to be successfully delivered in the same area.
While Green Volt has helped drive many of these action orientated discussions forward, collaboration on this scale should not sit with any single developer. In many ways, as a front runner project, we are creating the platform for these shared workstreams to evolve and succeed.
Looking ahead, I believe this type of coordination will ultimately need to be managed independently at an industry level. Encouragingly, many of the developers involved already share this view, recognising that neutral, industry-wide coordination could provide the consistency needed as more projects move towards construction.
Peterhead town centre
Working collectively for the energy transition
The projects represented within the Peterhead Developer Forum collectively represent many billions of pounds of future energy infrastructure. If the UK is serious about delivering Net Zero at the scale required, collaboration between developers will need to become a far more normal part of how projects are developed.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do believe that by truly working collectively, developers can start finding solutions that work not just for individual projects, but for the wider system.
In many ways, we’re all on a journey — working with others across the industry to help shift mindsets from isolated development towards coordination and collaboration. If we can do that, we give ourselves a far better chance of delivering the energy transition successfully for our communities and for our planet.
