Crown Estate pegs MeyGen investment as future funding catalyst
The Crown Estate has announced that it has committed to invest nearly £10m into the MeyGen Ltd tidal power development, as part of approximately £50m of funding for the first phase of its 398MW project in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth, Scotland.
By K.Steiner-Dicks on Aug 22, 2014
The MeyGen funding syndicate for the first phase of this project also includes Atlantis Resources Ltd, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Scottish Enterprise via the Renewable Energy Investment Fund (delivered by the Scottish Investment Bank) and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
By applying targeted capital and sharing its expertise in offshore wave and tidal energy, The Crown Estate hopes to catalyse investments by others and see further projects proceed to construction and operation, thereby maintaining the UK’s global lead in this sector.
Rob Hastings, Director of Energy and Infrastructure, The Crown Estate said: “We have been a major player in the development of the offshore renewable energy industry for over 10 years. Our commitment to this investment is part of our strategy to explore the potential of tidal stream energy on a commercial scale with a project that offers acrucial stepping stone on the path towards unlocking the nation’s tidal energy potential over the long term.”
To date, The Crown Estate has leased over 40 sites for tidal current and wave projects, and has now started the first leasing process for tidal range projects.
This includes new seabed rights agreed this summer, including six new wave and tidal current demonstration zones across the UK. For the first time this is enabling locally-based organisations to manage and sub-let parts of the seabed to a range of wave and tidal stream developers; and five new wave and tidal current sites, each with the potential to deliver a project of between 10 and 30 MW.