Masdar takes 25% stake in North Sea wind farm

The Mubadala-owned clean energy company Masdar has taken a 25 per cent stake in Hywind Scotland, a 30 megawatt floating offshore pilot wind farm in the North Sea, the company said on Tuesday at the World Future Energy Summit.

Masdar will share the development costs with Statoil while covering a quarter of the total outlay for the project, due to be completed later this year.

“When complete, Hywind Scotland will be the first floating wind farm in the UK and its novel technology offers vast, global potential,” said Keith Brown, the Scottish Parliament cabinet secretary.

This project will push Masdar’s total UK investments above 1 gigawatt of power, which is enough electricity to supply 6,600 homes.

Meanwhile, the company is also looking at Qatar, announcing that it will work with Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC) and Nebras Power to deploy renewable energy projects in the UAE, Qatar and globally.

Nebras, a joint venture between QEWC, Qatar Holding and Qatar Petroleum, invests in power generation, water desalination and treatment as well as liquefied natural gas projects. “Through such partnerships, Nebras aims to consolidate its position in the energy sector, especially in renewable energy,” said the Nebras chief executive Khalid Mohammed Jolo.

Masdar intends to double its current 1GW of capacity, and is scouting for new projects throughout the GCC as well as tackling new areas such as the Indian subcontinent and Algeria.

"For the past few years, we've been assessing new areas: waste to energy, carbon capture and storage and water," Mohamed Al Ramahi, chief executive of Masdar, told The National last month. "Water is an area that we'll be focusing on moving into next year and over the next five years."

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