Press Release
THE CROWN ESTATE AWARDS WESTERMOST ROUGH OFFSHORE WINDFARM SITE TO DONG ENERGY
24 May 2007
The Crown Estate is awarding an Agreement for Lease to develop the Westermost Rough offshore windfarm site to the Danish energy company, DONG Energy. The award follows a tendering process which saw strong interest among potential developers to secure the development rights.
The site, located in the north-western part of the Wash, was originally awarded to TOTAL Energie SA of France, but handed back to The Crown Estate in February 2007 following a company decision not to pursue offshore wind development in UK waters.
Westermost Rough covers 35 km² of seabed and when fully developed has the potential to accommodate a windfarm with a capacity of up to 240 MW. The development programme will run over a number of years starting with essential environmental studies in connection with the statutory consents process. If approved, DONG will progress to the engineering and procurement phase with construction likely to start around 2012-13.
Rob Hastings, Director of Marine Estates at The Crown Estate said: “We were very encouraged by the interest that we received for Westermost Rough, resulting in a highly competitive tender process with very strong contenders. The site was awarded to DONG Energy based on their clear and unconditional commitment to progress the development of the site. We are confident that the combination of this commitment and DONG Energy’s demonstrated capability in the UK offshore wind sector will bring this project back on track. We look forward to DONG Energy commissioning Westermost Rough to provide a valuable contribution of green power to the UK energy market”.
Gert Hemmingsen, Head of UK renewables activities at DONG Energy said: “We are very pleased to have been selected by The Crown Estate as the preferred bidder to develop the Westermost Rough site. It will provide further stability in the pipeline of projects that we are progressing through to construction and operation”.
DONG Energy, based in Denmark, is one of the leading energy groups in the Nordic region. Their business is based on procuring, producing, distributing, trading and selling energy and related products in northern Europe. They employ approximately 4,500 people and generate DKK 36 billion in revenue. The renewables business is one of the growth areas in DONG Energy backed by a strong in-house team of wind power developers, engineers, project managers and O&Mstaff counting more than 200 dedicated specialists.
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