SCALE offshore wind deployment

An equitable approach to effective wind farm site selection

For offshore wind to play a pivotal role in reaching net zero, communities, offshore wind developers, environmental groups, marine spatial planners and policymakers must balance multiple factors that shape marine spatial planning and site selection.  

SCALE helps government bodies and developers to identify the most favourable sites to locate offshore wind farms, balancing performance, lifetime costs and other environmental and marine economic activities, as well as the influence of supply chain partnerships, grid connections and technologies. By combining Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) and geospatial constraints they can obtain a holistic assessment of site feasibility, maximising their chances of successfully developing a project.

The tool has been used to help the UK government and seabed leasing authorities to understand the complex factors that will influence decisions around future offshore wind development out to 2050.