Aberdeen will be the venue for an event billed as the largest offshore wind conference and exhibition ever staged in Scotland.
Scottish Renewables has teamed up with Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, The Crown Estate, Carbon Trust and Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG) to stage All-Energy 2011 on February 1 and 2.
A Scottish Renewables spokesman said the event would “lead the debate on key issues shaping the industry’s growth”.
Picking up from the ministerial summit staged in Aberdeen on December 17, a key theme of the conference will be the areas where technology and service capability from the oil & gas industry can make a significant contribution to the offshore wind sector.
This is a theme that AREG has been battering away at for a decade and the very reason why the All-Energy conference and exhibition was devised in Aberdeen in 1999, and has been staged every year since 2000.
Following on from the immensely successful All-Energy conference programmes and calls by Energy’s editor Jeremy Cresswell way back for proper engagement between the two sectors, the February conference will explore, in some detail, lessons learnt by the oil & gas sector. This includes tackling the practical and logistical barriers to this market and how they can be unlocked.
Key themes will be:
Lessons from our existing offshore energy industry
Enabling infrastructure, including grid and supply chain facilities
Emerging consenting regime and licensing process
Health and safety requirements
Action on skills
Emergency response obligations
Opportunities within the supply chain
Research suggests that, with up to 10 gigawatts of offshore wind development planned, the industry could add £7billion to Scotland’s economy, creating up to 28,000 jobs in this new sector by 2020.
Confirmed speakers include: First Minister Alex Salmond; Niall Stuart, CEO of Scottish Renewables; Lena Wilson, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise; Cameron Smith, CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power and Adrian Fox, supply chain manager for The Crown Estate.
Invited speakers include: Malcolm Webb, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK; Mike Nielson, director of Marine Scotland, and others from Vattenfall Wind Power, Gamesa and BiFab.
The programme was being further developed as Energy went to press.
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