Celtic Sea Floating Offshore Wind Leasing Round 5 (“Round 5")

The Crown Estate, as managers of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, wishes to award seabed rights to prospective suppliers and developers, which will allow such suppliers and developers to develop, build and operate floating offshore wind farms in the Celtic Sea for the purposes of generating, transmitting and selling electricity (or other forms of energy, where permitted), as part of Round 5. The contracts which The Crown Estate expects to enter into as a result of Round 5 will grant new seabed rights to developers for the development of new floating wind farms within three project development areas, each of which has a maximum potential energy generation capacity of 1.5GW (meaning a combined maximum potential energy generation capacity of 4.5GW across all 3 project development areas). These rights will be governed by three separate ‘agreements for lease’, which The Crown Estate intends to award to three different successful suppliers through a competitive tender process – one for each of the three project development areas. Holders of the agreements for lease will acquire the rights necessary to develop floating offshore wind farms in the relevant project development areas and will have the option to enter into leases with The Crown Estate for the construction and operation of these wind farms for the purposes of the generation, transmission and sale of electricity (or other forms of energy, where permitted), subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions detailed in the agreements for lease. Further information is included in the information memorandum that was published by The Crown Estate in relation to Round 5 in December 2023, a copy of which can be found at: https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our-business/marine/round-5-document-library. The Crown Estate also published a prior Information Notice on 7 December 2023, (Notice reference 2023/S000-036033) and held a Bidders Day for Round 5 at the Swansea Arena, Wales on 31st January 2024. A recording of the event and the slides used, can be found at: https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/our-business/marine/round-5-bidders-day The procurement process for Round 5 will comprise of a pre-qualification questionnaire stage, followed by an invitation to tender stage 1 and an invitation to tender stage 2. A copy of the pre-qualification questionnaire is available to suppliers that have registered on The Crown Estate’s e tendering portal, via such portal, which is available at: https://etendering.thecrownestate.co.uk via the Links “Round 5 Registration and PQQ User Guide”. The pre-qualification questionnaire includes a summary of the key requirements that will apply during the invitation to tender stage 1 and invitation to tender stage 2 stages.