INCH CAPE OFFSHORE WIND FARM: Scotland’s Offshore Wind Ambition Takes Shape
Offshore wind projects don’t come much bigger than Scotland’s Inch Cape. A JV from Red Rock Renewables and ESB, when online the turbines will provide enough green electricity to power approximately half of Scotland’s homes. But this isn’t global corporates parachuting in and out to build a template. This is a Scottish project, using regional skills, developing communities, and delivering for local people.
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15 kilometres off the Angus coast, in the same North Sea that has shaped the communities and economies of eastern Scotland for centuries, one of the country’s most significant infrastructure projects is moving from blueprint to reality. Inch Cape Offshore Wind Farm has been in development since the site was first selected in 2008, and through planning, consent, ownership changes and the complexities of financing a project of this magnitude, the ambition has only grown. With construction now underway and full operation targeted for 2027, that ambition is being tested against what it actually takes to build 1.1 gigawatts of offshore wind in Scottish waters. So far, the project is delivering.
The numbers that define Inch Cape carry a certain weight. 72 turbines, each reaching up to 274 metres, will be installed across a 150 square kilometre site on monopile and jacket foundations in water depths from 34 to 64 metres. The monopiles are among the world’s largest — up to 105 metres long, 11.5 metres in diameter and 2,700 tonnes at their heaviest. A single offshore substation will gather power from 150 kilometres of array cables and transmit it via two 220kV subsea export cables across 85 kilometres to landfall at Cockenzie in East Lothian, where a new onshore substation built on the brownfield site of the former Cockenzie Power Station will feed into the national grid.
When fully operational, Inch Cape will generate enough clean electricity to power an estimated 1.6 million Scottish homes — roughly half the homes in Scotland — while cutting carbon emissions by an estimated 2.5 million tonnes per year. The project represents a total investment of more than £3.5 billion in UK electrical infrastructure, with more than 55% UK content to be delivered across its lifecycle. It accounts for approximately 10% of the Scottish Government’s 11GW offshore wind ambition for 2030, and contributes significantly to the UK’s national target of 50GW by the same date.
Inch Cape is a 50:50 joint venture between Red Rock Renewables and ESB, the Irish energy company with a growing UK renewables portfolio. The partnership has navigated a development timeline stretching nearly two decades — a length that allowed the project to benefit from advances in turbine technology and foundation engineering unavailable when the site was first identified. The 72-turbine configuration represents a reduction from earlier designs but with significantly higher installed capacity, a direct result of the step change in turbine size the offshore wind industry achieved in the intervening years.
CONSTRUCTION GATHERS PACE
The progression of any large offshore wind project can be measured in the steady accumulation of milestones that eventually add up to a wind farm, and Inch Cape has been gathering those milestones at pace. One of the less visible but demanding achievements of 2025 and early 2026 was the completion of an 18-month boulder relocation programme. A total of 26,402 boulders were relocated along the export cable corridor, at the offshore substation platform, around each foundation position and along the array cable routes — clearing the seabed for the cable-laying and installation work that followed.
That groundwork is reflected in a construction programme moving across multiple fronts. The offshore substation platform is installed and the first export cable is in place with burial well progressed; the second cable is in transit and due for installation in early summer. The first XXL monopile was installed by Jan de Nul’s Les Alizes in December 2025, and 23 are now in the seabed with the full campaign scheduled for completion this summer. The onshore substation at Cockenzie is on track for mid-2026 completion. The Seaway Alfa Lift has arrived in Leith to install transition pieces, jacket foundations and pin piles, and turbine installation by the Cadeler Wind Mover is scheduled for late 2026, with commercial operations targeted for 2027.
In March 2026, the first three of Inch Cape’s 18 jacket foundations arrived at the Port of Leith. Each jacket is a lattice steel framework up to 83 metres tall — twice the height of the nearby Port of Leith Distillery — weighing between 2,050 and 2,250 tonnes, and designed for the deeper water locations across the site where depths exceed 55 metres.
Forth Ports has developed purpose-built renewables hubs at both Leith and Dundee to serve offshore wind projects requiring marshalling support on the east coast. Callum Hogan, Asset Manager at Forth Projects, describes the scale of the commitment: “At our bespoke purpose-built renewables hubs in Leith and Dundee, we are able to offer an unrivalled service for major offshore wind projects. Inch Cape is the largest contract secured to date for Forth Ports and we are well under way in Leith, with Dundee due to start later this year.”
The project’s relationship with Montrose Port Authority is equally central to its delivery. Montrose serves as Inch Cape’s construction base and will remain the project’s home for its operations and maintenance phase.
Captain Tom Hutchison, CEO of Montrose Port Authority, describes the significance of that relationship: “Inch Cape represents exactly the kind of transformative partnership that Montrose Port has been working towards. To see a project of this scale choosing to base both its construction office and operations and maintenance activities here speaks volumes to the confidence in what this port and region can deliver. We are particularly pleased to see local businesses playing a key role in building Inch Cape’s O&M base in our port. That is how an energy transition should work, strengthening the local supply chain and delivering real benefits to local communities. The commitment also doesn’t stop at construction. Knowing that Inch Cape intends to employ local people to operate and maintain the wind farm for decades is something that is incredibly important to us.”
Two new-build crew transfer vessels, delivered in May 2026 by UK marine contractor Mainprize Offshore, are now operating out of Montrose Port. The twin vessels will transport engineers and technicians offshore during construction and remain with the project into the operations and maintenance phase on a five-year charter — a practical expression of the long-term local commitment the project has made to the port and region.
BUILDING LOCAL FUTURES
The broader economic context sits within a Scottish offshore wind sector growing rapidly in scale and ambition. An independent socio-economic report published by Inch Cape sets out the scale of its contribution: total investment over the project’s lifetime reaches £8.4 billion, with £2.7 billion to be spent in Scotland and £3.5 billion in gross value added for the UK, including £1.25 billion in Scotland. At peak construction, approximately 2,600 UK jobs are supported. With 172 Scottish companies having contributed to the project to date and 384 UK companies involved overall, the supply chain reach is already substantial — and the Scottish Government’s target of 11GW of offshore wind by 2030 points to much more to come.
For communities most directly in the project’s orbit, the long-term economic opportunity matters as much as construction. Inch Cape has committed to more than 50 long-term skilled local jobs for the operations and maintenance phase, and has moved to ensure the local workforce pipeline develops in parallel with the physical infrastructure. A memorandum of understanding signed in May 2026 between Inch Cape and Dundee and Angus College formalises a skills partnership through the new Montrose Port Skills Academy, with Inch Cape providing a nacelle training system, hydraulic workstation and hands-on STEM grid kit for practical training.
Steve Swinley, Project Manager for Offshore Wind at Dundee and Angus College, welcomed the partnership’s practical ambition: “This partnership creates exciting new opportunities for our students to access industry-informed learning, hands-on training, and clear pathways into offshore wind careers. By working closely with industry partners, such as Inch Cape and its turbine supplier Vestas, we can ensure our teaching remains relevant, responsive, and focused on real-world skills.”
Captain Hutchison lauded the skills initiative and what it means for the region: “This partnership between Inch Cape and Dundee and Angus College is exactly the kind of collaboration that will develop the skills needed to support a thriving, sustainable energy sector. As a trust port, we’re committed to ensuring local people have real opportunities to work on the wind farms on our doorstep. With students from across Angus already taking part in the Futures in Offshore Wind course, that’s becoming a reality.”
Sue Vincent, Stakeholder and Communications Manager at Inch Cape, set out the project’s long-term intent clearly: “Local people with the right skills are vital at every stage of an offshore wind farm’s lifecycle. Montrose Port will be Inch Cape’s home not only for construction but also for the long-term operations and maintenance phase of the project, which will create around 50 new local roles. Through our support of Dundee and Angus College via Montrose Port Skills Academy, we will help provide a direct stepping-stone from education and learning into a promising local offshore wind career.”
The combination of physical infrastructure, port investment, supply chain engagement and skills development that Inch Cape is delivering reflects what a genuinely embedded approach to offshore wind looks like — one where the project builds lasting capacity within a location rather than simply extracting value from it.
With monopiles being driven offshore, jacket foundations arriving in port, export cables being buried, substations nearing completion and turbine installation on the horizon, Inch Cape is demonstrating that Scotland’s offshore wind ambition is not merely a policy commitment. It is a project under construction.