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Offshore wind giant Orsted has been hit with an East Coast Hub launch ‘hangover’, after the next project in the build-out pipeline was hit by a six month delay.

The high level consenting had been anticipated on Hornsea Three this week, but as the official unveiling of the £14 million Grimsby base was celebrated, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom confirmed the decision deadline had been put back to March 31.

It is in response to concerns over ornithology impact, with sandbanks off the North Norfolk coast, and part of a special area of conversation also highlighted.

 

The RSPB has claimed “necessary information to consent the Hornsea Three project on the basis of no alternative solutions, imperative reasons of overriding public interest and securing of necessary compensatory measures,” had been provided by Orsted as it seeks backing from BEIS.

Hornsea Three, at 2.4GW, would be virtually double the size of the record-breaking Hornsea One, and sit further off the coast, beyond the zone’s first two projects. Nearly 700 sq km is being investigated, and unlike the first two, where power comes onshore at Horseshoe Point, Lincolnshire – just south of Grimsby – this would feed into East Anglia. Hornsea One and Two skirt North East Lincolnshire to reach purpose built substations at North Killingholme, connecting to the National Grid, whereas Hornsea Three would home in on Norwich.

Concerns stem from new advice received from Natural England when considering Norfolk Vanguard, a Vattenfall project off East Anglia, also awaiting a decision from the Secretary of State. It focus on  the “combination impacts on seabird populations in the North Sea arising from the construction and operation of offshore wind farms.”

In particular it lists the breeding gannet population at the Flamborough and Filey Coast special protection area, the breeding kittiwake population at the same are and the breeding lesser black-backed gull population of the Alde-Ore Estuary, off the Suffolk coast.

 

Such objections will be taken extremely seriously by the industry, with an offshore wind farm development in the southern North Sea – Docking Shoal – turned down because of potential impact on the sandwich tern. The refusal, seven years ago, is understood to have cost Centrica £10 million in development.  It came at the same time as Race Bank – developed by Orsted having been bought off plan from Centrica – was given the go-ahead.