Renewable energy remains a key part of our portfolio and has grown and diversified in 2010. Our current portfolio of sites includes 18 onshore and 3 offshore wind farms, our, dedicated biomass power station at Lockerbie and our wave energy device in the Orkney Islands, as well as a healthy flow of projects in the development pipeline.
In 2010, we saw the completion of four onshore wind projects - Great Eppleton repower (8MW), Haswell Moor (10MW), Butterwick Moor (20MW) and an extra turbine at Stags Holt (2MW). We also completed our third offshore wind farm – Robin Rigg (180MW) - which received the Best Renewable Project at the Scottish Green Energy Awards. These sites more than doubled our installed wind capacity, adding 220 MW to our portfolio.
Onshore construction work also started for Phase 1 of the London Array with our partners and we’ve started offshore construction in 2011, with commissioning planned for the end of 2012.
Three new onshore wind farms have moved into the construction phase – Tween Bridge (44MW), Camster (50MW) and Rosehall (25MW). These are significant projects, and both Tween Bridge and Camster are bigger than any of our existing onshore fleet.
In onshore development, we’ve focused on developing larger sites in line with our strategy. During 2010, 220MW of new projects moved into development that added to our existing pipeline of over 600MW.
Offshore, we have been focusing on the development of our fourth offshore wind farm - Humber Gateway (230MW) which received offshore consent in early 2011. In January 2010, The Crown Estate awarded us the exclusive right to seek consent to build a 665MW offshore wind farm off the Sussex Coast (which, after a competition open to local people, was subsequently named Rampion).
We’ve made good progress with our preparations for construction of our second biomass plant at Blackburn Meadows in Sheffield and progressing the development of Portbury Docks, on the outskirts of Bristol, which is currently in planning.
During 2010 we also completed a CHP scheme at Steven’s Croft Biomass Power Station in Lockerbie which will provide a heat supply to a local wood products manufacturer and increase the efficiency of the process.
2010 was also a year of significant achievement for our marine team. We began a sea trial of ‘Vagr Atferd’, our Pelamis wave energy converter, which was subsequently installed at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney and this machine will be tested for 3 years. The focus as we move forward will be to understand how this device behaves in the challenging conditions of the open sea.
Renewables
We are firm advocates of stakeholder engagement and prepare consultation programmes for all renewable projects.
The types of engagement that we undertake around our communities include public exhibitions to inform local stakeholders about our projects, newsletters, stakeholder workshops, websites, presentations in schools or community groups and briefings for key stakeholders.
For the larger sites (above 50 MW), we’ve been working on developing the required documentation under the new planning legislation. This requires a formal process for pre-application consultation, including the development of a Statement of Community Consultation for a new site in the North East. This is a document that is required under the new planning legislation and sets out how we intend to engage and consult with people in the vicinity of the project.
Our new offshore development off the Sussex coast was previously called Zone 6. We ran a competition across local schools to come up with a new name for the wind farm. A shortlist was put to a public vote and ‘Rampion’ (the name of the county flower of Sussex) was chosen as the winner.
For our construction projects we have produced a number of newsletters to keep local people informed on the progress of construction and held local events to make local business aware of opportunities to support the construction programme.
In 2010, we delivered a comprehensive programme of more than 50 events to support our projects and help raise the profile of the business. These included trade events, as well as offering support to The Crown Estate on their supply chain events that helped make suppliers aware of our offshore projects and the potential activities required during its construction.
In 2010, we developed a new community benefit framework for managing and allocating funds to the appropriate areas within the community. We set up a contract with the County Durham Community Foundation for our Great Eppleton wind farm. The foundation will appoint a panel to assess all of the applications and subsequently allocate grants to local projects. This enables us to demonstrate our long-term commitment to the communities in which we operate enabling them to share in the wider benefits of hosting a wind farm.