Also announced – New Director of Development for Onshore in GB and Ireland
Following the news The Scottish Government has granted consent for the offshore array of the Berwick Bank Wind Farm, SSE Renewables has announced the appointment of Sandie Lengden as the new Project Director for Berwick Bank, leading forward one of the UK’s most ambitious offshore wind developments.
Sandie succeeds Alex Meredith, who has now been appointed Director of Development for Onshore Wind, Solar, Battery in Great Britain and Ireland. Alex will be responsible growing future value in SSE’s pipeline of onshore development prospects in the company’s core markets.
Maria Ryan, Director of Offshore Development at SSE Renewables, said:
“Sandie brings a wealth of experience in renewable energy infrastructure and project leadership.
“With a proven track record in managing complex energy projects, Sandie is well-placed to lead the project through its next critical phase as it prepares eligibility for participation in the UK’s Allocation Round 7 (AR7) for renewable energy auctions and moves closer to a final investment decision and on to delivery.
“Over the past four years, Alex has steered the Berwick Bank project through a complex and evolving landscape, overcoming significant challenges with determination and unwavering commitment. His leadership has been instrumental in guiding the project through critical and challenging milestones culminating in today’s offshore array consent decision, which I sincerely thank him for.”
Heather Donald, Director of Onshore Wind, Solar, Battery (GB and Ireland) at SSE Renewables said:
“Alex takes up this key development role to deliver growth opportunities in onshore renewable technologies in GB and Ireland at an important time for our business. He will bring his wealth of development experience across offshore and onshore wind technologies, including most recently leading the Berwick Bank team for the last four years, to provide leadership and direction to the development, land and estates, and consents and environment teams within the onshore development team as well as to wider support functions.”
Developing an offshore wind project on the scale of Berwick Bank has demanded extraordinary teamwork so far from teams across SSE Renewables and the wider SSE Group.
Following their new appointments, we recently caught up with Alex and Sandie in North Berwick where they reflected on Berwick Bank's progress to date.
About Berwick Bank
Berwick Bank, located in the outer Firth of Forth, is poised to become the largest single offshore wind farm in the world, with a planned capacity of 4.1GW – enough to power over 6 million UK homes annually.
The project is central to the UK and Scottish Governments’ 2030 clean energy targets and is expected to create over 9,000 jobs at peak construction and over £8 billion of value into the UK economy over the wind farm’s operational lifetime.