Scotland has one of the world’s great opportunities in floating offshore wind. The question is whether we will simply generate the electricity here or build an industry around it.
For the Northeast of Scotland, the distinction is critical.
The region has spent more than half a century developing world-class skillset, developing offshore engineering, subsea, marine and project delivery capability. Floating wind offers the opportunity to redeploy those skills into a growing global industry, while creating new manufacturing, fabrication, operations and export opportunities. But none of that is guaranteed.
The UK’s experience of fixed-bottom offshore wind gives us reason to think about our approach to floating. We have successfully hosted major projects and captured valuable work in ports, logistics, operations and maintenance. Yet too much of the high-value manufacturing and fabrication associated with those projects has taken place elsewhere. There is a real risk that we sleepwalk into the same pattern.
The latest ScotWind supply-chain commitments forecast £25.5 billion of expenditure in Scotland across 16 projects. That is significant. But Scotland’s expected share of manufacturing commitments has fallen from 27 per cent in 2023 to 20 per cent, while Europe is now expected to capture 41 per cent. Floating wind gives us the chance to do things differently.
Its supply chain is not yet fully established. Northeast Scotland already possesses many of the capabilities it will require, from subsea engineering and deepwater operations to moorings, dynamic cables, marine logistics and offshore maintenance. However, there is an urgency.
Northeast Scotland’s offshore energy workforce has already fallen from around 56,000 people in 2016 to 42,200 in 2024. Depending on future investment, research suggests another 18,000 could be lost by 2035. Yet around 90 per cent of skills in the oil and gas offshore workforce are transferable to renewables, hydrogen and carbon capture.
We have an extraordinary national asset. But we cannot transition a workforce without creating the work for it to transition into.
What is needed now is confidence: for ports to invest, supply-chain companies to build capacity, developers to place contracts locally and people to commit their careers to the industry.
That means giving floating wind a clear place in Britain’s future energy system, creating a viable route to market for commercial-scale projects and addressing grid and connection barriers. Crucially, we must recognise industrial and economic value alongside the cost of electricity when strategic decisions are taken.
The prize is bigger than Scotland. If Britain develops the companies, capability and expertise to deliver floating wind at scale at home, we can export them to a growing international market.
Scotland has the projects, Northeast Scotland has the people, skills and industrial heritage.
What we need now is the ambition and urgency to turn those advantages into an industry, before someone else does.