Friday marked the last day of Corio Generation CEO Jonathan Cole’s tenure at the top of the company.
Speaking to Energy Voice before the announcement of his departure, Cole shared his thoughts on his career and the direction of the offshore wind sector.
Corio reported that Cole would step down last week, with his last day on 31 January, as he looks to prioritise his family life.
Having spent three years at the head of the company, the announcement comes not long after he received the Outstanding Contribution Award at last year’s Scottish Green Energy Awards.
“I was a kid 20 years ago when the awards first started, so it was nice to be recognised,” he says.
“But I think the recognition was not just about running two successful businesses in this space, but actually doing a lot more outside of my company to help grow the sector and work collaboratively and constructively with organisations and people who, on the face of it, are competitors.
“When you look at the bigger picture, we also have to be collaborators to make the case for renewable energy in the face of quite a lot of opposition sometimes.”
Career
Cole has served in a variety of leadership roles across the energy sector for the past 20 years.
Before moving to Corio, he was involved in creating and running Iberdrola’s global offshore wind business, which was started in Glasgow within Scottish Power.
Since taking over the top job at Corio, he has built up the business over three years to the point it is now a global player with 25GW of projects all over the world and more than 250 professional staff.
In addition to his leadership roles, he currently serves – and aims to carry on – as chairman of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
He has also spent time as the chairman of the Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization, the UK government’s Offshore Wind Programme board and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s industrial advisory group.
In addition to this, sat on the boards of the Offshore Wind Energy Council and Renewable UK.
“Along that journey, I’ve always taken my role as being very purpose-driven,” he says.
“It’s not just been about leading businesses for the sake of it, but actually doing things that really matter.
“I’m a firm believer in action against climate change, and the energy transition in the particular role that the energy sector has to play.
“With that in mind, I’ve always been quite active outside my own organisations in helping not just grow our own projects and business, but actually grow the whole industry and shape regulatory policy and kind of political sentiment.”
Industry views
Over Cole’s career, he’s seen offshore wind grow from a nascent technology to the point of delivering major gigawatt-scale projects, with multi-gigawatt projects on the horizon, along with upscaling the technology and growing the supply chain whilst bringing the cost down.
“There was a really successful period we had through the whole of the last decade and establishing offshore wind as really the cornerstone of the energy transition,” he says.
However, the start of the decade has seen offshore wind hit with headwinds, going from COVID and its impact on the supply chain to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and macroeconomic challenges around the cost of capital and inflation.
“It’s absolutely clear that offshore wind has been through a pretty turbulent couple of years and everyone in the sector has had to somehow deal with that,” Cole adds.
“But if you take a step back and look at this for what it is, which is a snapshot of a few years in the life of a 30-40-year programme to decarbonise the global economy, I think we won’t look back and dwell too much on this period.”
While the challenges have claimed some casualties, Cole says that the industry can weather the storm.
“What you’ve got to do is kind of brace yourself, protect yourself, be disciplined at this moment in time, but don’t take your eye off the long-term opportunity and prospect for growth.”
Time for discipline
Despite this, he added there are a lot of reasons to be positive about the direction of the industry.
“Over the past couple of years while all these other macroeconomic issues have been going on, what we’ve also seen is some really good progress being made,” Cole says.
“The year before was a record year in terms of installations for offshore wind and there’s a real kind of sense of momentum all over the world in terms of the need to grow renewable energy and offshore wind.
“And that’s not going to change. So despite what’s happening in today’s economy, the long-term future is still very much saying you have to keep investing. I still feel quite bullish about offshore wind’s long-term prospects.”
He adds: “The mantra right now is to be disciplined.”
To really help push offshore wind forward over the next couple of years, Cole pointed to some regulatory overhauls that would help the industry.
“The big regulatory enablers for offshore wind are fast-tracking the permitting and making sure that we are investing ahead of time in the transmission infrastructure, otherwise it will become a major constraint and bottleneck,” he says.
“And then setting up the right processes for bringing projects to market and selling the power in a way that creates long-term stable pricing for the benefit of the producers of the power, but also for the benefit of consumers. We’ve seen very well the impact of volatility in pricing and how that can adversely affect people since the Ukraine crisis.
“Those things are progressing, but too slowly and we’ve been talking for so long about them that it gets a bit frustrating that we don’t move them quicker.”
West of Orkney
Corio is part of four major offshore wind farms in development in the UK, with its flagship 2GW West of Orkney currently in development around 30km off the west coast of Orkney and around 25km from the north Sutherland coast.
Developed jointly by Corio Generation, TotalEnergies and RIDG, the project will be one of the UK’s largest offshore wind farms upon completion, with first power scheduled for 2029.
“West of Orkney is a leading project because it’s one of the few ScotWind projects that is 2030 ready,” Cole explains.
“It’s already got its planning consent application submitted, it’s already received the onshore planning consent in principle and the offshore one is moving towards a determination probably ahead of any other ScotWind project.
“It’s also already secured a firm unconditional grid connection for the entire volume of the site to be ready by 2030, which is probably ahead of most other ScotWind projects.
“And we’re already making pretty good progress in terms of supply chain engagement and procurement activity to get ourselves ready for the upcoming contracts for difference (CfD) allocation rounds.”
Cole added that he expects a determination for the offshore planning consent to come sometime this year.
“And hopefully we will be eligible for a CfD allocation round coming up either later this year or next year,” he notes.
Getting through the approval process swiftly will be crucial to getting West of Orkney online in time to help the UK meet its clean energy goals.
“It’s one of the projects that can actually be delivered to help with the 2030 ambitions of the new government.”
Not only that, but West of Orkney’s position will help forge a path for later projects to follow.
“With ScotWind, you have to see this as a long-term industrial plan and you have to get the pacing and the attention in the right places at the right time,” Cole says.
“It’s very important that we keep the focus on building out the grid and enabling the full extent of ScotWind to be brought to market in due course. But what we also need is to keep the short-term focus on those 2030 ready early projects. Because those will have that catalysing effect for the rest of ScotWind.”
“Getting those early projects up and running successfully will attract the investment and infrastructure like ports that will attract the investment in supply chain fabrication, manufacturing services that are needed that the subsequent projects will then benefit from.”
