Associate Feature: The partnership to develop Scotland’s Supply Chain

The Scottish Government has set an ambitious target of 11 GW of installed offshore wind capacity by 2030. There is no doubt that Scotland has the natural resources to deliver on this ambition. What the ScotWind leasing round aims to do is find the right partners to realise it.

The right partners need to have a track record of delivery, ambition to develop and grow the supply chain in Scotland, and the experience and knowhow to deliver a project of such scale quickly.

Mainstream Renewable Power and Siemens Financial Services via Siemens Project Ventures have joined forces to bid in Crown Estate Scotland’s ScotWind leasing round, reuniting the team that won and developed the 4 GW Hornsea zone – now the largest offshore wind farm in the world - enabling a competitive offshore wind-centred economy in the region.  The focal point of this is Siemens Gamesa’s blade manufacturing facility and service hub located at Green Port, Hull which has created approximately 1,000 direct jobs, with more than 90% of employees living within a 20-mile radius of the facility.

We were able to create the Hull facility through vertical supply chain collaboration – having our key, tier 1, turbine supplier onboard from day one. We will use the same, unique, approach to deliver similar benefits in Scotland by investing in and developing existing and new Scottish facilities to fabricate key turbine components.

Our other tier 1 supplier, Siemens Energy, also has extensive experience and a commitment to Scotland, having delivered more than half of Scotland’s offshore wind transmission capacity and invested almost £200 million into Scottish suppliers over the last five years while delivering renewables and transmission projects.

We are renewing this partnership with a view to recreating the same success for Scotland’s supply chain through commitment such as having the concrete foundations manufactured in Scotland helping our partner to repurpose their facility for renewables and enabling them to build a platform to the future.

Mainstream is rooted in Scotland. We run our global offshore operations from Scotland, our global offshore wind team is based here, and many of the project team live in the west coast of Scotland.

From the experience gained through our successful efforts to take the 450MW Neart Na Gaoithe (NnG) Offshore Wind Farm from inception through to consent, we know Scotland.

Throughout the development of NnG we worked closely, and extensively with the Scottish Government, MSPs, environmental groups and local communities, we care about getting it right for Scotland.

Scotland already has much of the infrastructure in place to support this transformation, what Mainstream and Siemens bring is joined up thinking from the start. That’s why our supply chain-focussed partnership with Siemens will build on our track record of delivering jobs and our track record of developing projects in Scotland.

Our project is all about bringing long term benefit to Scotland. We’ll create a dedicated multimillion pound fund to support the development of a competitive local supply chain to underpin the project’s development. We will also create a dedicated community benefit fund to sponsor local community initiatives and establish a training scheme in the West Coast of Scotland to encourage the development of local skills that are relevant to the offshore wind industry.

Mainstream and Siemens understand the transformative potential of renewable energy development for the climate, and for local communities which will be critical in advancing the Scottish Government’s ambitious climate targets. What we do now could make ScotWind the greatest supply chain story of our generation.

Click here to view a short video about the partnership https://vimeo.com/642396409

This article was sponsored by Mainstream Renewable Power.