Ardersier Port could be on the way to becoming a vital location linking energy across the North Sea.
Ardersier Port used to be one of the big fabrication yards for the North SeaThe spit of Moray Firth coast at Ardersier used to be of vital strategic significance in ensuring the Jacobite clans could never rise again, and the French could not get into the hearts of the Highlands to help them.Nearby Ardersier Port could be on the way to becoming a vital strategic location for a different purpose, linking energy across the North Sea rather than defending from it.
Having been announced in January, that could take 12 months. And while investors are being encouraged to line up their plans, clarity on how it works will take patience. The project now has a chief executive in Lewis Gillies, an engineer from the north of Scotland, with 20 years experience with BP and 15 in private equity-backed energy projects.Taking over operations from the founding partners of this venture, he will work for a newly created parent company, given the name Haventus.
So after several unhappy years as BiFab, the yards at Methil in Fife and Arnish near Stornoway are well-placed for more work as part of Harland and Wolff, including a good location on Lewis for the first wind farms in Scotland's Atlantic waters.Forth Ports is investing in Leith docks to prepare it for very large floating turbines to come alongside the strengthened quay. It shares the benefits ahead of green freeport status.
Some hope is pinned on the new technologies required for floating turbines. Scotland had the first such wind farm, using Norwegian technology.Its pipeline of orders for floating wind, following a new round of bids to build out capacity to de-carbonise the energy required by offshore oil and gas platforms, is reckoned to be nearly a third of the current world total.
This year, in the Belgian port of Ostend, they have invited the UK and Norway, as well as some without a North Sea presence but with a big interest in offshore wind; Ireland, France and - as a financial centre, Luxembourg.
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