Scotland's offshore wind plans grind on amid Trump headwinds, by Jeremy Grant

For offshore wind in Scotland last week was as tempestuous as it gets. And I don’t just mean the battering from Storm Eowyn. 

Donald Trump banned any further offshore wind projects in the US, declaring: “We’re not going to do the wind thing”. The ripple effect was felt in Europe as shares in two of the region’s largest wind businesses, Orsted and Vestas, tumbled. 

Undeterred, industry body Scottish Renewables hosted an offshore wind conference in Glasgow on how to deliver the vast North Sea wind farms that are to help the UK start delivering clean power by 2030.  

Trump’s distaste for offshore wind has been known in Scotland since he launched a series of legal challenges a decade ago against a wind farm planned off the Aberdeenshire coast, complaining it would spoil the view from his golf course at the Menie Estate. 

“So far, so unsurprising”, Kate Forbes, deputy first minister, said of his latest salvo. She also told the conference the picture for Scottish offshore wind was “more complex and muddier than it’s ever been”.

That’s down to years of inflation-related cost pressures and, in the UK, glacial progress on grid connections and transmission upgrades. Industry also has been puzzling over supply chains, especially for the floating wind farms that are the next frontier in technology and make up 60 per cent of planned capacity under the ScotWind seabed leases awarded three years ago.

Yet Forbes and others also struck an optimistic tone, citing a “once in a lifetime economic opportunity for Scotland”. This is not hyperbole. The build-out of offshore wind represents nothing less than the re-industrialisation of Scotland, as Scottish Renewables chief executive Claire Mack noted. 

And it is starting to happen, even though little is yet visible off the Aberdeenshire coast. Digging and dredging are underway at Ardesier Port near Inverness to develop a quayside capable of accommodating offshore wind component assembly at a site the size of 22 football fields. Last week, developer Cerulean Winds picked Ardesier for development of one of its wind farms that should be operational by 2029. 

Up the road at Nigg, 5,000 tonnes of steel are being sourced for a 10-acre factory underway by Japan’s Sumitomo Electric to make subsea cables. Scottish National Investment Bank this month pledged to invest £20 million in XLCC, another subsea cable company that will use Chinese technology to make cables at an expanded Hunterston marine yard. 

Offshore wind’s problem is partly one of expectations and optics. A wind farm won’t be real to the public until Eiffel Tower-sized turbines are dotting the horizon. Progress on the unglamorous behind-the scenes building blocks tends to be invisible.  

Chris Stark, the UK government’s head of “mission control” at the department for energy security and net zero, explained that work is underway on 80 UK transmission projects. Westminster intends the next renewable energy subsidy auction to be record-breaking. The goal is engineering a switch in the energy mix to renewables from gas. 

“Why are we doing this? It’s very good for the climate, but more important is the huge energy security and economic return we get, particularly in Scotland,” Stark said. “The next 12 months are absolutely critical.”