Collette’s Q & A

Offshore wind is the only technology available at a sufficient scale to deliver the UK’s Clean Power by 2030 target (NESO, 2024). The Government’s commitment to quadruple offshore wind capacity to 55 GW, alongside a zero-carbon electricity grid by 2030, places projects like Collette at the heart of national decarbonisation efforts.

We are encouraged by the Government’s plans to double onshore wind, triple solar, and expand offshore wind through GB Energy and the Local Power Plan, which will offer low-interest loans to community-led projects. Project Collette aligns directly with these ambitions and is seeking to partner with GB Energy as a co-developer, demonstrating how large-scale offshore wind can deliver both clean power and meaningful community ownership. However, to fully realise this vision, planning bottlenecks and grid infrastructure constraints must be addressed to enable timely connection and delivery.

The UK currently has 14.7 GW of operational offshore wind capacity, the second-largest globally after China, and a total pipeline of up to 93 GW. Cumbria already contributes 1.83 GW from six offshore wind farms along the Irish Sea coast, including Robin Rigg in the Solway Firth, which together generated around 11% of the UK’s total electricity in 2020. Project Collette builds on this foundation, extending the region’s role in achieving national net-zero ambitions while pioneering a model of community-centred, publicly partnered offshore wind development.

As part of our feasibility study, we investigated 3 potential areas. We recommend that Project Collette is sited on a level with Sellafield, approximately 20-30km from the Cumbrian coast in the Irish Sea. The choice of the site was based on various factors such as water depth, stability of the seabed, and impact on the local environment.

It will take between 7 and 12 years before Collette’s wind turbines start turning. To break this down, it takes three to five years for the feasibility, development and planning work, one to three years for the pre-construction phase and then four to eight years to build. The project is currently at the pre-feasibility and exploratory stage.

To make Collette a reality, there’s a lot of work to be done and many challenges to overcome. However, we believe that this project is possible, and it will bring unique local community wealth-building and shared ownership opportunities that will set it apart from other foreign-owned commercial wind farm projects in the UK.

Project Collette represents at least a £3.3 billion capital investment, including contingency, with a 30-year operational lifetime. We are developing the initial financial model, designed to balance public investment, private capital, and community ownership.

The early-stage development is expected to be funded primarily through government and philanthropic grants, enabling key preparatory work to proceed without transferring risk to local investors. As the project matures, we anticipate financing through a blend of UK equity (including crowdfunding) and debt from project finance lenders. Crucially, local people will have the opportunity to own a real stake in Collette, ensuring that community participation is meaningful, fair, and financially secure.

This approach directly reflects the Community Integrated Investment Model (CIIM), which is designed to integrate communities as co-investors alongside institutional and strategic partners. Under the CIIM, early-stage public and philanthropic capital de-risks the project, paving the way for broader community and citizen investment once the project reaches bankability. This ensures that community ownership is structurally embedded from the outset, while maintaining financial prudence and long-term value creation across every stage of the project.

Community-led means that local people have a genuine voice in shaping the project, from its design and values to how benefits are shared. It’s about ensuring that decisions reflect local priorities, not just developer interests. Being community-led means we will work with residents, local authorities, and community organisations every step of the way.

Community-owned goes a step further. It means that the community holds a direct financial stake in the project, through a cooperative, community benefit society, or other shared ownership model. This ensures that a portion of the profits and long-term value created by the project stays in the local area, supporting social, environmental, and economic priorities defined by the community itself.

Together, being community-led and community-owned means that local people are not just consulted but are co-owners, co-investors, and co-beneficiaries in the clean energy transition.Project Collette’s CBS will invite the community in West Cumbria to become members, and they will play a key role in deciding how the financial returns from Project Collette are distributed and reinvested locally. We want to understand your priorities and aspirations for the area to ensure that the benefits flow to where they are needed most and have the greatest long-term impact.

Project Collette represents a major investment in offshore wind and offers significant opportunities for developing the local and regional supply chain. The project will require goods, services, and expertise across manufacturing, fabrication, marine logistics, installation, operations and maintenance, and professional engineering services. By incorporating the concept of a marginal purchaser, Collette will be able to prioritise local suppliers and strengthen the regional supply chain.

The Project will create thousands of jobs in the supply chain and hundreds of local jobs in the construction phase. Slightly less in long-term operations. For example, about 250 people are currently employed in the operation and maintenance of the Walney Extension wind farm.

To gain approval for the project, we will need the Crown Estate to grant us a seabed license and we will need to do Visual Impact and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). This will consider things like possible visual impacts, impacts on marine life, to the marine traffic caused by the construction of onshore cables and transporting large components to ports etc.

We are keen to understand any environmental or visual impact concerns that you might have so that we can ensure we explore every angle to check it won’t cause harm.

While Project Collette will have some embedded carbon from the materials and energy used during construction, this is expected to be offset within approximately 1.5 years of operation. After that, the project will deliver decades of clean, low-carbon electricity, making a lasting contribution to reducing emissions and supporting the UK’s net-zero goals.