Scotland has decided to build two offshore installations to provide wind and wave power to the national grid in order to support its goal of having 50 percent of its energy needs from renewable energy by 2020.

Fluor Corporation’s UK division along with Scottish company Airtricity will develop an offshore wind farm that would generate 700 MW of energy. Earlier this year, the two companies were granted an exclusivity award by The Crown Estate to develop an offshore wind farm at Bell Rock off Scotland’s Angus coastline.

During the next year, Fluor and Airtricity will work with a variety of local authorities, statutory and non-statutory entities and other stakeholders in order to undertake site specific consultations and environmental impact assessments before bringing forward a final plan for development of the site. The site is 10 kilometres from the Angus coastline and covers around 93 square kilometres.

In addition to the wind farm, Scottish company Aquamarine Power and Fugro Seacore were awarded  the contract to build a wave-energy generator off the coast of Orkney, Scotland.

This comes in the wake of the Scottish Parliament’s current targets to meet half the country’s electricity demand from renewables by 2020, with an interim target of 31 percent by 2011.