After reducing the overall area for its proposed Berwick Bank offshore wind farm by 10 per cent last year, SSE Renewables plans to further reduce the size of the area by 20 per cent before applying for planning consent with Scottish Ministers later this year.
Updating the Environmental Impact Assessment to reflect the new boundary and taking requests made by Marine Scotland in the Scoping Opinion will result in the consent application being made in the fourth quarter of this year rather than the second quarter, as anticipated, the developer said.
The change to the boundary is one of several measures being taken by the project to reduce potential effects on local seabird populations as well as benthic and shellfish ecology, fishing, shipping and navigation and represents the final step in the pre-consent design process.
The decision to further reduce the overall area of the Berwick Bank development site comes after SSE Renewables already reduced the area by 10 per cent last year. The decision was made as part of the project’s design process following extensive stakeholder consultation, detailed ornithological studies, and full environmental assessment which is nearing completion.
Although the overall area that will form the basis of the consent application is to be reduced, the capacity of green electricity that will be generated by Berwick Bank will remain unchanged at 4.1 GW, SSE Renewables said.
Situated 40 kilometres off the east coast of Scotland, in the outer Firth of Forth, Berwick Bank has been in development for ten years, initially as two projects: the 2.3 GW Berwick Bank and the 1.85 GW Marr Bank offshore wind farm.
In September last year, SSE Renewables informed that it had combined the two offshore wind projects into one development – the Berwick Bank Wind Farm.
When complete, the offshore wind farm will be capable of generating enough renewable energy to power over five million homes, equivalent to all of Scotland’s households twice over, and avoiding eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year – similar to removing all of Scotland’s annual car emissions, according to the developer.