Aberdeen’s proposed offshore wind farm has got a major boost with MEPs approving €40 million for the Aberdeen Bay project.

The wind farm project is a joint venture between Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG) and Swedish utility company Vattenfall. 

Vattenfall owns 75 percent of Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm Limited, a joint venture development partnership with AREG for the offshore project situated in Aberdeen Bay off the coast of Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire. The project comprises 23 turbines with a maximum turbine height of 150 metres and an individual capacity of up to 5 MW. 

Aberdeen Central Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald was part of a delegation of MSPs taking part in the Scottish Parliament’s inquiry looking at future energy policy, which visited Lillgrund windfarm, about six miles offshore in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Denmark. 

Macdonald said other countries like Sweden and Holland have already built large-scale offshore windfarms, but no-one has done so yet in the kind of challenging environment found in the northern North Sea. 

He said visiting a large offshore windfarm like Lillgrund, in the relatively sheltered waters of the Baltic Sea, gives a real vision of what the North Sea’s next great industry could bring.

 “The challenges are huge, and Aberdeen is best-placed to meet them,” he explained. 

That is why there is an offer on the table from the European Commission to provide €40 million in funding for an Aberdeen Bay windfarm to act as a European test centre for offshore wind, just as the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney does for wave and tidal power, said Macdonald.

“We must not miss this unique opportunity to put the city at the forefront of what will be the biggest new energy industry of the next decade,” added Macdonald.