The UK regulator for the oil and gas industry, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), requires the industry to reach a net zero target by 2050. In order to achieve this ambitious target, Crown Estate Scotland has been working closely with the NSTA to deliver a new round of offshore wind leases aimed at helping decarbonise the production energy utilised on the industry's platforms and infrastructure in the North Sea.

As a result a new round of site leasing was opened for bids on the 10th of August 2022. The closing date for this round was the 18th of November 2022. Projects must have the aim of decarbonising oil and gas infrastructure as the main purpose to bid in these rounds, and offshore wind developers will partner with offshore oil and gas operators.

There is also an innovation element to the INTOG round where projects of less than 100MW can demonstrate new technologies relating to offshore wind systems including hydrogen production. The overall capacity of the INTOG round was expected to be in the order of 4-5GW with the innovation element making up a further 500MW. 

Crown Estate Scotland announced that they had received 19 bids in total, 10 for the Innovation part and 9 for the Targeted Oil and Gas (TOG) part, before the application window for this round closed. Successful bidders were announced in March 2023 with only 5 of the 10 Innovation sites being awarded and 8 of the Targeted Oil and Gas sites being successful although one of these TOG projects has since been dropped from the round resulting in 7 TOG projects in total. .    

INTOG Map

The map on the left shows the current areas of search available for such projects. It also shows the oil and gas assets and pipelines along with exclusion zones where no projects were possible.    

The map on the left shows the updated offshore wind map for Scotland with just the INTOG leasing round sites shown along with the list of successful bidders on the 12 sites set out below. These are split into two lease types, one for Innovation projects up to a 100MW limit and the other for Targeted Oil and Gas projects. 

Innovation Leases

Scaraben - BlueFloat Energy and Nadara Partnership
Sinclair - BlueFloat Energy and Nadara Partnership 
Salamander -Orsted and Simply Blue Energy 
Flora - bp Alternative Energy Investments
Malin Sea Wind - ESB Asset Development 

Targeted Oil and Gas Leases

Aspen - Cerulean Winds
Beech - Cerulean Winds
Cedar - Cerulean Winds 
Green Volt - Flotation Energy and Vargronn
Cenos - Flotation Energy and Vargronn
Judy - Harbour Energy
Culzean Pilot - TotalEnergies

These developers have been given Exclusivity Agreements for these sites and previously the plan was that once Marine Scotland has completed the corresponding planning exercise, the INTOG Sectoral Marine Plan, providing the sites are approved by this process, then Crown Estate Scotland would award Option Agreements to the site developers.
Marine Scotland has now decided that projects do not have to wait on the completion of the sectoral plan and have awarded planning to the Green Volt project making it the first of the INTOG projects to do so. Green Volt has now been successful in their bid for a Floating Wind CfD in Allocation Round 6.
Three other INTOG projects have now applied for planning permission and are shown in the listing.       

We expect more information to be forthcoming from the companies involved about their floating wind technology choices and other innovations in this unique offshore wind round.