Siemens Gamesa Inks $1.3B Wind Turbine Deal with ScottishPower
An offshore wind farm in the southern part of the North Sea will feature turbines from Siemens Gamesa after the company signed a supply agreement with ScottishPower. The deal announced Nov. 11 is for 64 of Siemens Gamesa’s SG 14-236 DD turbines that will be installed at East Anglia TWO, a wind farm located just more than 20 miles off the Suffolk coast.
ScottishPower has said the installation represents a £4 billion ($5.1 billion) investment. Siemens Gamesa said blades for the turbines will be made at the company’s factory in Hull in the Yorkshire region of the UK.
East Anglia TWO is ScottishPower’s third offshore wind project in the southern North Sea. The wind farm is expected to have 960 MW of generation capacity.
Investing in UK Energy
ScottishPower recently announced it is doubling its investment in UK energy projects from £12 billion to £24 billion ($30.7 billion) over the next four years. The company has nearly doubled its workforce in the past year, and now employs about 1,300 workers.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, “Our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower will fire up our industrial heartlands and break down barriers to growth in our hard-working towns and cities. It will strengthen our national security—protecting our children and grandchildren from the climate crisis, and impact this will have on their future prosperity.”
Starmer, who is attending the ongoing COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, said, “By acting decisively and early, the UK has an opportunity to lead the world in the industries of the future—working in partnership with business like ScottishPower and Siemens Energy—creating real energy security, cutting energy bills and building jobs and supply chains in the UK. But we can’t move alone, and at COP I will lead efforts to protect Britain from climate change by also working with other countries to accelerate the global clean transition to tackle the causes at its root.”
Siemens Gamesa is the fully owned wind business of Siemens Energy. The company has more than 6,000 employees in the UK.
Darren Davidson, UK and Ireland vice president for Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa, said: “The UK is the first leading industrial country to simultaneously phase out coal power and be a leader in offshore wind. If we’re to achieve our net-zero targets, it’s mission critical this momentum is maintained. As well as delivering the blades to power the UK’s energy transition, our factory in Hull is acting as a catalyst for economic growth and green jobs across the region.”
“This investment is a huge vote of confidence in the UK’s growing renewables sector and will power our clean energy future, supporting skilled jobs and green growth in Hull and beyond,” said UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. “Offshore wind is the backbone of our clean power 2030 mission; every new turbine in our waters helps us boost energy security, protect consumers, and tackle the climate crisis. We are making the UK a clean energy superpower, backing industry to build cleaner, global supply chains, and to drive investment into our country.”
UK Goals in Contrast to U.S.
The UK’s vision for offshore wind stands in contrast to concerns that the U.S. could abandon the technology during president-elect Donald Trump’s second term. Trump has been a vocal opponent of offshore wind.
“We are going to make sure that that [offshore wind] ends on Day 1,” Trump said in a May speech. “I’m going to write it out in an executive order. It’s going to end on Day 1. They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is. They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”
Several U.S. and state agencies have said there is no evidence linking offshore wind to the deaths of whales off the U.S. coast. Trump’s has been vocal in his opposition, saying offshore wind turbines spoil the view from a golf course he owns in Scotland.
The American Clean Power Association has said there are about 65 GW of offshore wind generation capacity under development in the U.S. Only a few projects are in operation, including the Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island, the South Fork Wind Farm off Montauk Point on New York’s Long Island, and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project.
UK Offshore Wind Goal
The UK has a goal of installing 50 GW of offshore wind generation capacity by 2030. Officials have said the North Sea has the potential for as much as 120 GW of offshore wind capacity.
“Today is tangible proof of the importance of Britain’s Clean Power Mission—our East Anglia projects are delivering UK jobs, UK supply chain contracts and UK green energy,” said Keith Anderson, CEO of ScottishPower. Getting more projects like East Anglia TWO off the blocks quicker will turbo-boost the UK’s supply chain, giving companies like Siemens Gamesa the confidence to invest in facilities like this blade factory in Hull.”
Anderson added, “Britain’s clean power targets are achievable but demanding. We’ve doubled our investment and are ready to play our part with government as it gets barriers out the way to build more projects like this, alongside the electricity networks needed to ferry green, homegrown power across the country.”
Siemens Gamesa also supplied the turbines for ScottishPower’s other two projects in the company’s East Anglia Hub. The 714-MW East Anglia ONE has operated since July 2020. East Anglia THREE, a 1,400-MW installation, is under construction.
The SG 14-236 DD offshore wind turbine has a rotor diameter of 236 meters, with 115-meter-long blades. Each unit has 15 MW of generation capacity.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).