Measuring the Impact of Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm
Perth, UK - The £2.6bn investment in Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited (BOWL) is one of the largest private sector investments ever in Scotland, nearly twice the investment of the £1.35bn Queensferry crossing. Once fully operational in 2019 this project, will see 84 wind turbines that will be able to generate enough to power up to 450,000 homes.
Beatrice provides a total of £34m for community projects; £6m forms the Beatrice community fund which is managed by SSE's Community Investment Team, and a further £28m will be provided by BOWL over the lifetime of the wind farm to the Coastal Communities Fund.
According to SSE the SROI analysis of the Beatrice community fund by NEF Consulting found that for every £1 invested in community projects in the Highland and Moray regions, £3.21 is expected to be created in value for the communities. The £6m Beatrice fund, which supports the advancement of community projects in the Highland and Moray regions, could create nearly £20m of social value when fully distributed.
As SSE points out, it's not just the community funds, it's also the total £2.6bn investment in Beatrice that will bring benefits across the UK, adding an estimated £1.13bn to the UK GDP and supporting more than 18,100 full time job-years (according to economic modelling). Nearly half of this will be contributed to the Scottish economy and builds on the work underway to maximise local supply chain involvement through our Open4Business initiatives.
These numbers are great news, not just for SSE, but also for the local and national economy. They prove that as a UK-based energy company we can build projects of size and scale that bring direct benefits to lives and livelihoods in Scotland and across the UK.
SSE measures its overall economic impact every year and the ‘number crunchers’ tell us that SSE has boosted the UK economy by around £9bn every year since 2011/12. This year (2016/17) we know that contribution to UK GDP was £9.3bn. Staging the Olympic Games in the summer of 2012 contributed £9.9bn to the UK economy, so SSE is making an Olympic-sized contribution every single year.
Source: IWR Online, 26 Jul 2017