September 1st 2022
Ocean Winds in the UK launches scholarship fund
Ocean Winds in the UK has launched its scholarship programme to support students from the Moray and north Aberdeenshire areas through undergraduate degrees. Successful students will be awarded up to £12,000.
September 1st 2022. Stepping up the range of programmes to support young learners, Ocean Winds (OW), an international company dedicated to offshore wind energy and created as a 50-50 joint venture in 2020 by EDP Renewables and ENGIE, has launched a scholarship fund. The funds will assist undergraduates cover their study and living costs during the course of the degrees. £3,000 per year is available, up to a maximum of £12,000 for a four year course.
To encourage interest in the local offshore wind sector the funds are open to school leavers from Moray and north Aberdeenshire, as defined by the Moray and Banff & Buchan Westminster constituency boundaries. The university where students choose to study is only limited to the UK.
A broad range of courses will be eligible, simply requiring some connection with a future role in the offshore wind sector. While not assured, it is hoped that some of the funded students may in time be recruited by Ocean Winds to work on the growing portfolio of Scottish projects.
Commenting, Adam Morrison, UK Country Manager for Ocean Winds:
“Ocean Winds recognises the urgent need to help our future workforce be attracted to our rapidly growing sector and become educated for the exciting challenges we can offer. Our existing STEM programme is helping to raise awareness of the fantastic opportunities in our sector. Now our targeted scholarship fund will help young undergraduates from the regions around our O&M bases get a significant foot forward against the costs of choosing to study for a degree. We continue to strive to convey the passion we feel for the need, value and satisfaction of all the varied roles in our sector. We hope students will submit applications for the Ocean Winds scholarship fund on a potential pathway to a role with Ocean Winds or the wider offshore wind sector. We are constantly looking for enthusiastic amazing young people to help us deliver commercial scale wind farms off Scotland, to keep on growing the clean energy our country urgently needs to meet its energy transition objectives.”
About Ocean Winds
Oceans Wind (OW) is an international company dedicated to offshore wind energy and created as a 50-50 joint venture, owned by EDP Renewables and ENGIE. Based on our belief that offshore wind energy is an essential part of the global energy transition, we develop, finance, build and operate offshore wind farm projects all around the world. When EDP and ENGIE combined their offshore wind assets and project pipeline to create OW in 2019, the company had a total of 1.5 GW under construction and 4.0 GW under development; OW has been adding rapidly to that portfolio and is now on a trajectory to reach the 2025 target of 5 to 7 GW of projects in operation, or construction, and 5 to 10 GW under advanced development. In 2022, OW’s offshore wind gross capacity already operating, in construction or with advanced development rights granted reaches 14.5 GW. OW, headquartered in Madrid, is currently present in 8 countries, and primarily targets markets in Europe, the United-States, selected parts of Asia, from where most of the growth is expected to come.
About Ocean Winds in the UK
OW is currently operating, building and developing, five offshore wind projects in Scotland (Moray East – 950 MW, Moray West – 882 MW, Caledonia – up to 2 GW and two areas within the NE1 area east of Shetland – up to a combined total of 2.3GW). The recent awards east of Shetland mean that OW now has a total portfolio of 6.1 GW in Scotland.
About the Scholarship fund
The funding for the scholarships comes from the three Moray Firth projects: Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) Ltd., Moray Offshore Windfarm (West) Ltd. and Caledonia Offshore Wind Farm Ltd.
Details can be found by registering for free on https://www.blackbullion.com/register and then going to the application page: https://www.blackbullion.com/funding/ocean-winds-scholarships
Applications close 23rd September.
For more information: https://www.oceanwinds.com/