Planning Consent Granted for East Anglia One Offshore Windfarm

East Anglia One Offshore Wind, a 50-50 joint venture between IBERDROLA’s subsidiary ScottishPower Renewables and Vattenfall, has received consent from the UK Department for Energy & Climate Change.

With 1,200 MW capacity, the project will be located off the coast of East Anglia and will become one of the world’s largest.

The development is IBERDROLA’s most ambitious renewable energy project thus far and is also the first in England and Wales to be approved from the Crown Estate’s Round Three Process.

The planning consent allows for the installation of up to 240 wind turbines across an area of 300km2 in the southern North Sea.

The project contemplates construction of five offshore substations to collect the electricity from the turbines and transfer to the shore via four seabed export cables, each around 73km in length. A new onshore converter station adjacent to the existing substation at Bramford, Suffolk, will be built to connect the offshore wind farm to the National Grid.

The project could power the annual electricity demands of around 820,000 homes and during its construction phase it could support up to 2,700 jobs across the UK, of which 1,600 jobs will be in the East Anglia region alone, adding over £500m to the regional economy.

Following a final investment decision, it is anticipated that onshore construction could begin in 2017, with offshore work starting in 2018 and first power generation achieved in 2019.

For three years, IBERDROLA and Vattenfall have been working with stakeholders and East Anglian communities to realise the full potential of the project.

IBERDROLA Group has identified offshore wind energy as one of the foundations for its future growth and aims to lead the development of this technology, advancing with the caution required in investments of this nature. The Company has an Offshore Business Division, with offices in Glasgow, London, Berlin, Madrid and Paris, which drives the gradual implementation of its project pipeline, which totals about 8,000 MW in the United Kingdom, Germany and France.