The Crown Estate has invited developers interested in bringing forward renewable energy trading projects to provide details of their plans.

The data provided will allow the managers of the UK seabed, to consider the spatial effect of possible cable infrastructure from proposed renewable energy trading projects, thereby establishing a better understanding of how licensing for this infrastructure could be structured.

This permission is needed for infrastructure installed on seabed and foreshore for which The Crown Estate acts as landlord. In this instance that applies to cables and other works out to the 12 nautical mile limit of UK territorial waters.

Renewable energy trading projects plan to connect overseas renewable energy to the GB electricity market through subsea cables. It is estimated that there is an opportunity for projects of this type to provide between 0-5 GW of capacity by 2020.

Ian Selby, Head of Minerals and Infrastructure said: “Renewable energy trading has the potential to play an important role in the UK’s future energy mix. Gathering this baseline data is an important first step towards understanding how these projects could be accommodated alongside each other and together with existing technologies, to optimise the use of the seabed.

Press Release, December 30, 2013