The Scottish floating wind industry will deliver “higher quality jobs” than those created by the oil and gas sector in its early days, according to the chief executive of Cerulean Winds.
Speaking to Energy Voice, Dan Jackson said the long-term jobs impact of the company’s three floating wind 1 GW projects alone will be “in the thousands”.
Cerulean Winds secured the three offshore leases as part of the Scottish government’s Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas (INTOG) round in 2023.
Once built, the Aspen, Beech and Cedar projects will include more than 300 wind turbines, with the renewable energy set to decarbonise offshore oil and gas operations in the North Sea.
Cerulean has brought together a group of oil and gas supply chain firms in an alliance model to deliver the project, including prime contractor NOV and operations and maintenance (O&M) partner Bilfinger.
In January, the company also became the first INTOG developer to commit to a deployment port as it selected the Haventus Port of Ardersier development.
The port facility, located near Inverness, is undergoing a £400 million redevelopment to reposition the former oil and gas fabrication yard for the offshore wind sector.
If all goes to plan, Cerulean will reach a final investment decision on its first Aspen project next year, before moving into the construction phase in 2027 and 2028.
INTOG and ScotWind
Speaking to Energy Voice, Jackson said the flexibility of the INTOG leasing round is enabling projects to move ahead quickly, with Flotation Energy’s Green Volt project securing planning consent last year.
INTOG projects like Green Volt and Aspen will give Scotland an “opportunity to develop the supply chain now” to position it for the “bow wave of opportunities that ScotWind brings in terms of scale,” Jackson said.
While other developers are facing a “chicken and egg” conundrum, which is preventing them from moving forward with port and other supply chain deals, Jackson said Cerulean is “committed”.
© Supplied by Cerulean Winds“We’re the first developers committed to a port in Scotland, we will build our floating wind in Scotland,” he said.
“If we build out floating wind in Scotland, we set up the supply chain for the industry to be developed for floating wind in Scotland.”
“The inward investment on our project alone is over a billion pounds, and that’s setting up infrastructure manufacturing capabilities [and] port facilities that are needed.”
Port of Ardersier
Jackson said its selection of Ardersier comes back to its alliance model, working alongside American oil and gas contractor NOV and Bilfinger.
“They will deliver our floating wind projects, and they will bring in underneath them the supply chain that we’re talking about today in terms of all the myriads of sub-suppliers and sub-sub suppliers,” he said.
“It starts with the prime contractors, and then the next step is the ports. And once you’ve got the port, you build the solution around the ports.”
Jackson said Ardersier is an “absolutely perfect” facility for floating wind, building on its long history with oil and gas.
The Ardersier Port was first opened by US engineering group McDermott in 1972, eventually becoming one of the world’s largest oil rig fabrication yards.
© Supplied by Sarens PSGAt its peak, the Ardersier employed as many as 4,500 staff, making it the largest private sector employed in the Highlands.
Jackson said American private equity group Haventus “has an expectation of bring back [that] scale of jobs” with its £400m redevelopment of the port.
“Our project alone is hundreds of jobs in the development phase, through construction you go into thousands of jobs,” he said.
“The long-term impact of jobs is in the thousands. In the oil and gas days 40 years ago, it was 10,000 people worked in the yards around Inverness.
“That’s coming back, but in far higher quality jobs associated with floating wind.”
Cerulean plans to use the facility for both an installation and operations base, Jackson added.
“We see it as a hub that has all of the facilities in one place and that has a huge advantage,” he said.
Doubts over floating wind jobs
But despite the promise of thousands of jobs and the return of heavy manufacturing, many employed in the oil and gas sector remain sceptical of the industry’s ability to support a just transition for the workforce.
In 2022, unions criticised a deal between Cerulean contractor NOV and Emirati fabricator Lamprell for the construction of tri-floater foundations.
The deal came shortly after Abu Dhabi-based Lamprell also won a major £150m contract to deliver foundation pieces for the Moray West wind farm.
At the time, GMB Scotland organiser Gary Cook said the NOV and Lamprell deal “sickens me to the core”, describing it as “absolute lunacy”.
© Supplied by LamprellBut Jackson confirmed to Energy Voice that the deal between NOV and Lamprell has “moved on post lease award”.
“NOV will manage the EPC contract for the floater, which will be an open tender,” Jackson said.
“The commitment to Ardersier means they will be manufactured and assembled there.
“Each floater, of which there will be 50 for Aspen alone, is the size of a football pitch, so it signals a significant volume of work.”
Floating wind leveraging oil and gas
Jackson said he believes the floating wind sector will deliver greater transitional opportunities and jobs for Scotland’s oil and gas workers compared to fixed offshore wind.
“Fixed offshore wind to me is an extension of onshore wind. A fixed structure,” he said.
“Floating offshore wind is far closer to the oil and gas industry, particularly the floating oil and gas industry. The technologies are very similar.
“We’re talking about floating structures, [and] we’re not just designing for the performance of the floating structure, we’re now designing for manufacturing in Scotland, and we’re designing for servicing and integration in Scotland.”
Jackson said much of the Cerulean Winds team, including himself, has a background in “big, deep water oil and gas projects”.
“The expertise for floating wind is leveraging oil and gas,” he said
© Supplied by Ross Creative Commun“That’s where we see the leverage and not surprisingly the prime contractors in our consortium are largely dominant in the oil and gas space.”
In addition to floating structures, Jackson said people working across subsea and offshore operations will see they have a “whole set of skillsets that are very transferable” to floating wind.
“A lot of the people currently employed in Scotland are going to directly see their skill sets applicable in floating wind, where perhaps they wouldn’t in fixed wind.”
‘Once in a generation opportunity’
Jackson said Cerulean and other INTOG developers have a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to create an industry”, and he wants to see it established in Scotland.
“We didn’t make the commitments to do it in China, we made the commitment to do it in Scotland,” he said.
“We will bring the floating wind industry to Scotland. If INTOG does not set up the floating wind industry [here], it has every opportunity to go elsewhere in the 2030s.”
If Cerulean can deliver on its ambitions to deliver “a very large portion” of its projects in Scotland, Jackson said: “Every other project that follows has got a very compelling argument just to slot behind and keep that industry growing at pace”.
“Because the number of awarded gigawatts is incredible. It would be a massively lost opportunity if that went overseas, like fixed wind arguably,” he added.
“But once we set it up here, it’s competitive. We know it’s competitive because we’ve done the analysis.
“If you set it up as a new industry, you have the opportunity to make it efficient and competitive.”
Opportunities for Scotland
Jackson said Cerulean wants to show floating wind developers are “not incumbent on going into oil and gas yards overseas”.
While international yards have a lower cost of labour, Jackson maintains they are “pretty inefficient” compared to what Cerulean has planned at Ardersier.
“What we can do here is be smart, and we’re setting it up with the Port of Ardersier and setting it up with the partners that we’ve engaged and locked in with,” he said.
“They’re going into it going, ‘we’re setting up an industry in Scotland that currently does not exist.
“But in 10 years’ time will be a major, major industry in the north-east of Scotland.”
To make that vision a reality, Jackson said developers, the supply chain and government “all need to work collaboratively”.
But Jackson believes the floating wind sector has already “proved to a lot of naysayers already that the bus has left the station”.
“You go back four or five years ago, I don’t think people believed floating wind was commercially viable,” he said.
“Floating wind is very competitive at scale, we just need to bring the scale, and we need to bring the scale to Scotland.”
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