The UK regulator for the oil and gas industry, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), requires the industry to reach a net zero target by 2050. In order to achieve this ambitious target, Crown Estate Scotland has been working closely with the NSTA to deliver a new round of offshore wind leases aimed at helping decarbonise the production energy utilised on the industry's platforms and infrastructure in the North Sea.

As a result a new round of site leasing was opened for bids on the 10th of August 2022. The closing date for this round was the 18th of November 2022. Projects must have the aim of decarbonising oil and gas infrastructure as the main purpose to bid in these rounds, and offshore wind developers will partner with offshore oil and gas operators.

There is also an innovation element to the INTOG round where projects of less than 100MW can demonstrate new technologies relating to offshore wind systems including hydrogen production. The overall capacity of the INTOG round was expected to be in the order of 4-5GW with the innovation element making up a further 500MW. 

Crown Estate Scotland announced that they had received 19 bids in total, 10 for the Innovation part and 9 for the Targeted Oil and Gas (TOG) part, before the application window for this round closed. Successful bidders were announced in March 2023 with only 5 of the 10 Innovation sites being awarded and 8 of the Targeted Oil and Gas sites being successful although one of these TOG projects has since been dropped from the round resulting in 7 TOG projects in total.   

INTOG map

The map on the left shows the current areas of search available for such projects. It also shows the oil and gas assets and pipelines along with exclusion zones where no projects were possible.