Irish-Spanish Partners Eye Floating Wind Opportunities Offshore Iberian Peninsula

Irish floating wind developer Simply Blue Group has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Spanish companies Proes Consultores and FF New Energy Venture to explore the floating offshore wind opportunities in Spain and Portugal.

The floating wind market in Spain got a kick start recently with the publication of the draft Marine Spatial Plan and Marine Energy Roadmap 2021.

Spain is seen as an attractive market for the development of floating offshore wind due to the outstanding wind resource, the longstanding coastal engineering and civil works heritage, as well as superb supply chain capabilities, Simply Blue Group said.

Simply Blue Group, Proes Consultores, and FF NEV bring complementary expertise to the MOU and will together, explore more than 2 GW of opportunities across Spain and Portugal, the Irish developer said.

”As leaders in floating offshore wind we believe we can bring our extensive experience to the Spanish and Portuguese market in terms of lessons learnt from our early floating wind projects in the UK and Ireland,” Adrian De Andres, Director Market Development at Simply Blue Group said.

”We look forward to working alongside Proes Consultores and FF NEV to explore these opportunities in Spain and Portugal. The Spanish marine energy roadmap highlighted supply chain development as a key area of opportunity for Spain and the potential growth of local jobs and within this consortium we are focusing on this topic since the early stages.”

Proes Consultores is the engineering division of Amper Group, a technological conglomerate providing engineering, industrial and technological solutions.

Ignacio Sanchidrián, Executive General Manager of Proes Consultores, said: ”At Proes, we believe that renewable energy, and floating offshore wind has a key role to play in our growth strategy. Within our organisation we have broad expertise in coastal engineering, renewable energy, and environmental impact assessment. In Proes, we have participated in some of the pioneering offshore wind projects in the North of Europe we believe we have a lot to bring to this consortium for the development of opportunities in our home market, Spain.”

FF New Energy Venture (FF NEV) is a leading Spanish renewable energy developer, Simply Blue Group said.

”Floating Wind is complementary to solar energy from an energy mix perspective, and we believe our renewable energy development experience in Spain can strengthen this consortium. Energy security is paramount in the landscape we currently live in, and we believe the addition of floating offshore wind to our portfolio is the right step to help Spain reach its net-zero ambitions,” Manuel Fernandez de Castro, CEO of FF NEV, said.

Simply Blue Group has developed a pipeline of over 9 GW of floating offshore wind projects to-date, primarily in the waters off the UK and Ireland.

The projects include the 500 MW Nomadic Offshore Wind off the coast of Northern Ireland, the 200 MW Salamander project offshore Scotland, the 1.35 GW Western Star and the 1 GW Emerald projects offshore Ireland, and the 100 MW Erebus and the 300 MW Valorous projects in the Celtic Sea.

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