Onshore wind has been around for a good number of decades, in fact the first electric wind turbine was invented in Scotland by James Blyth way back in 1887 to light his holiday cottage in Marykirk in Aberdeenshire. Our Austrian friends might challenge that as there is some evidence that Josef Friedländer set one up in Vienna in 1883 so lets just that Blyth's home was the first house in the world to be powered by wind power. (We Scots almost invented everything in the modern world but we are too humble to shout about it :-))

Onshore Wind

Anyway, it started with onshore wind and although wind turbines were quite common globally in rural areas from 1900 onwards, mostly on farms, they did not start to reach utility scale, multi-megawatt machines until the late 1970s. The wind industry has expanded enormously since then not only with more wind farms being built but with the ever increasing capacity of the wind turbine technologies themselves.
Scotland and the UK were relatively late in developing onshore wind compared to some of our European neighbours such as Denmark, Germany and Spain but we have caught up somewhat in the last 10 years and we now have the bulk of the UK's operational onshore wind fleet in Scotland.
Our onshore wind capacity currently sits at just over 10GW (10,000MW in Jan 2026), with 1.6GW under construction and over 22GW in the planning pipeline. 
The Scottish Government's target for onshore wind is 20GW by 2030. The table below shows our progress towards the 2030 target with 18GW to be delivered from our exiting operational and consented projects (awarded planning permission). 

Only 2GW more from the projects already in the planning system need to get consent and be constructed in the next five years for the 20GW target to be met. With Scotland's winter peak electricity demand sitting around 4GW at the moment, potentially rising to 5GW by 2030, this would mean that the bulk of the generation from our onshore wind farms will go to help the rest of the UK to decarbonise their electricity consumption.    

Offshore Wind

Scotland' s offshore wind journey started in April 2010 with the completion of the 174MW Robin Rigg offshore wind farm in the Solway Firth which utilised 3MW turbines. Fast forward almost 16 years to today and the under construction 1,080MW Inch Cape wind farm in the Firth of Forth which will consist of seventy two 15MW machines. This huge increase in scale for offshore wind farms and their constituent turbines will not stop here but is set to continue in this decade and next. The world's largest offshore wind farm will be constructed in Scotland starting before 2030 and be fully generating by 2033. SSE Renewables' Berwick Bank project will be 4,150MW and could see huge 18MW-20MW turbines being deployed on the site.

It is this ability to be deployed at enormous scale that makes offshore wind such a powerful ally in the fight against climate change. The Scottish Government in January 2026 raised its offshore wind ambition to 40GW by 2040. The table below shows the current status of offshore wind projects in Scotland.           

The potential is there to deliver the 2040 target but it will require a concerted effort from the private and public sectors to deliver this ambitious target. It will also require the wholehearted support of the Scottish people to make this a reality as it requires new grid infrastructure, both onshore and offshore, to be placed in rural and coastal communities. Without such support this vital infrastructure could be held up in the planning system.

Future generations will benefit from this huge expansion of wind power in Scotland as it helps to de-carbonise not only the UK's electricity supply but also helps displace other fossil fuels with e-fuels based on power to hydrogen such as ammonia, methanol and Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).            

Offshore wind's role in combating climate change has increased significantly in the last 10 years. The UK was an offshore wind pioneer and invested heavily in proving that offshore wind could be a viable generation technology in tackling climate change. By delivering offshore wind at scale the path to cost reduction was made possible and this encouraged other countries to adopt the technology.
The shallow waters of the East Coast Of England were ideal for the development of offshore wind and many of the early wind farms were sited off this coast. Other European countries had similar shallow water, such as Denmark, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and they also contributed to reducing the cost of offshore wind.

Scotland's Role in Offshore Wind

Scotland's role in the offshore wind story has been somewhat different. Scotland did not possess the shallow seas found in England and elsewhere in Europe and was therefore being somewhat left behind in the development of offshore wind.
Our Answer? Use the lessons learned from nearly 50 years of putting oil and gas structures in the North Sea, one of the most inhospitable environments in the world. In 2005/06 the Beatrice offshore wind demonstration project saw two 5MW wind turbines installed in 45m water depth in Moray Firth using the jacket technology from the oil and gas industry. This was the deepest offshore wind installation in the world and was the instigator of the global adoption of jacket technology to tackle deeper water depths not possible using the monopile substructures of the day. 

Floating Wind

Scotland pushed the water depth envelope again in 2017 with the 30MW Hywind Scotland project, the world's first floating wind farm in 100-120m water depth. This was followed in 2021 by the 48MW Kincardine project which then became the world's largest floating wind farm.
In 2022 the results of the ScotWind leasing round followed by the INTOG leasing round in March 2023 saw the development of a 24.5GW pipeline of floating wind projects.
The development of floating wind technologies cannot be over emphasised enough as it now makes possible offshore wind developments in many countries that lacked shallow coastal waters. It has been estimated that over 80% of the world's offshore wind resource lies in water depths greater than 60m.     

Balancing the Books

Scotland played a major role in the development of the Industrial Revolution, both through the roles of inventors and innovators, such as James Watt and James 'Paraffin' Young, and through the industrialisation of shipbuilding and railway engine manufacture on a global scale. Scotland was a major exporter of coal fired transport and steam engines in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rise in CO2 emissions dates from this period of industrial expansion.

It is only fitting that Scotland is one of the leading countries that is developing floating wind with the aim of exporting this knowledge and technology to the world. Floating wind will become one of the largest contributors to a renewable energy powered world.    
The world's oceans represent 71% of the Earth's surface and by utilising a very small fraction of this area offshore wind can displace all fossil fuel usage across the globe. In the future power from the sea will supply green electricity, manufacture green electro-chemicals and fuels and become a cornerstone of a sustainable future for planet Earth to help reverse the effects of anthropogenic climate change.      

 Video: Kincardine floating offshore wind farm - Bourbon Subsea and Vryhof