Other Permit Awarded

On 14 May 2026 Aberdeenshire Council's Infrastructure Services Committee granted Planning Permission in Principle for the onshore electrical infrastructure required to connect the Buchan Offshore Wind floating wind farm to the national transmission network at Peterhead. The PPiP — a Scottish planning mechanism that fixes the principle of the development but leaves matters of detail to later approval — covers a cable landfall at Rattray Head and an approximately 20 km underground cable route running south to a new project substation close to the existing Peterhead Substation. Detailed designs and the substation reserved matters will return to Aberdeenshire Council before construction. The decision was reached despite an earlier Aberdeenshire Council investigation into whether officials had followed correct process when laying the groundwork for the application; the council processed the application in parallel with that complaint. Buchan is a near-1 GW floating offshore wind farm located around 75 km north-east of Fraserburgh, intended to power approximately one million homes and to anchor large-scale concrete-foundation manufacturing at the Ardersier Energy Transition Facility — a former oil-and-gas fabrication yard on the Moray Firth where exclusivity is held by foundation designer BW Ideol for serial production of its patented Damping Pool floating substructure. Onshore proposals were shaped by nine public consultation events and over three years of stakeholder engagement. An offshore consent application under the Electricity Act 1989 was submitted to Scottish Ministers in August 2025; determination is anticipated later in 2026. Grid connection is targeted in the early 2030s.