More than £15 billion-worth of renewable projects have secured planning permission in the past year with the bulk made up of proposals for new wind farms.
Glenigan's construction information research identified 801 renewable projects granted planning permission in the 12 months to July 2022 and 180 were wind farms with a total value of £12.3 billion.
Glenigan economics director Allan Wilén comments: “Renewable energy could not be higher on the political agenda, particularly given the need to boost Britain’s energy security following rising global energy prices and volatility in international markets.
“The government’s British Energy Security Strategy, announced in April 2022, set out an ambition to increase offshore wind capacity to 50GW by 2030; enough to power every home in the UK.
“The sector was already boosted by the commencement of the Sofia Wind Farm expansion in 2021 (Project ID: 19144506), but other major projects such as Dogger Bank (Project ID: 12391584) and Hornsea Three (Project ID: 16095470) could also boost sector activity should they commence on-site as hoped.”
Yorkshire & the Humber has the £3.5 billion Hornsea Project Three scheme and the £3 billion Dogger Bank project, but the largest number of approved renewable energy schemes are in Scotland.
There are currently six Scottish offshore wind farms in operation valued at £889 million and research from Scottish Renewables shows that projects to deliver another 16 Giga Watts of capacity are in the pipeline.
Glenigan has identified 67 Scottish wind farm schemes worth a total of £2.5 billion granted planning over the past year. The biggest scheme is the £2 billion Seagreen Charlie Delta Echo (Project ID: 17065248).
The remaining £731 million-worth of renewable projects in Scotland are 43 battery storage schemes and 20 solar developments with the remainder some form of associated works.
Shining on East Anglia
Two multi-billion pound wind farms are proposed off East Anglia: the £2.5 billion Norfolk Vanguard development (Project ID: 18125707) and Vattenfall’s £400 million Norfolk Boreas (Project ID: 18349480).
However, 44 of the renewable schemes in East Anglia given planning permission in the last 12 months are solar developments. These schemes are worth £139 million.
The Burwell Solar Farm (Project ID: 19400133) is valued at £34 million and will meet the average annual domestic electricity requirements of up to 9,500 households, but 39 of the approved East Anglian solar projects are much smaller and valued at £1 million or below.
Big projects
Many of the projects with planning are starting to move through the procurement cycle and Glenigan’s market research has identified contracts awarded on 184 wind farms schemes worth a total of £13.7 billion.
With contracts awarded to Innogy on the Sofia Wind Farm and Aibel on Dogger Bank, the North East is seeing the most amount of work by value.
