Weekly Intelligence Brief

Crown Estate defends delay in awarding leases

4 December 2009

The Crown Estate has reportedly defended delays in awarding leases to firms to produce wave and tidal energy in the Pentland Firth.

According to a report filed by NewEnergyFocus, the Crown Estate claimed that “sticking to schedule would have meant less of the ‘high quality' bids would have been taken through to the negotiation stage which would have been detrimental to the industry”.

Duncan McKay,wave and tidal project manager at the Crown Estate, a speaker at the recently held Tidal Today’s 3rd International Tidal Energy Summit, said, “We have had a lot of stick for delaying the process but what I would say to that is that we could have stuck to schedule but we would not have taken through as many bids as we are doing, which I believe would be of detriment to the industry due to the high quality of the bids we have received. This is an opportunity to see what the developers can do.”

Earlier this year, the Crown Estate announced that it had received 42 bids for the wave and tidal programme in the firth between the far north mainland and Orkney. But at this stage more projects than originally planned are being taken forward to the negotiation phase.

Bidders who have reached ‘provisional preferred bidder’ status are now able to speak to third parties in order to enable them to progress their projects and scoping activities related to those projects. This will ensure that the overall programme to enable the installation of at least 700 MW of wave and tidal capacity by 2020  continues to remain on target.

The London-based firm , which owns the seabed around the UK, will formally sign legal agreements by the end of March next year.

Read more:

The Crown Estate: http://social.tidaltoday.com/search/node/The+Crown+Estate

Pentland Firth: http://social.tidaltoday.com/search/node/Pentland+Firth