Developers have been given the go-ahead to build the country’s biggest offshore wind farm off the coast of our region.
East Anglia One Offshore Wind, a joint venture between ScottishPower Renewables and Vattenfall, today received consent from the Department for Energy & Climate Change.
The 1200MW project off the coast of East Anglia is the largest renewable energy scheme to receive planning consent in England and Wales.
Developers predict that three years of construction and 20 years of operations and maintenance could deliver £500m for the regional economy, and that enough power could be generated to meet the equivalent annual electricity demands of about 820,000 homes.
Construction of up to 240 wind turbines across an area of 300km2 in the southern North Sea could begin in 2017, with the first power exported in 2019.
It is the first of six potential projects in the East Anglia Zone and could support up to 2,700 jobs across the UK during the construction phase, feeding more than £170m into the UK economy for each year of construction. More than 1,600 construction jobs could be supported in the East Anglia region alone, adding more than £100m to the regional economy annually during construction.
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