Business
Costain Alliance Offers Renew
Costain Alliance Offers Renew.
About this update from Costain Group Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n RNS Number : 3873R Costain Group PLC 20 August 2010 \n \n\nCostain Group PLC\n(\"Costain\" or \"the Company\")\nCostain Alliance Offers Renewable Power Solution\nAs the Government increases its efforts to curb carbon emissions from the power generation sector, Costain is aiming to win a stake in the renewable energy market.\n \nOffshore wind farms offer the prospect of more predictable and consistent weather conditions than their onshore counterparts, together with fewer problems in gaining planning permission. However, constructing them in an offshore environment is more technically challenging.\n \nCostain has teamed up with Hochtief and Arup in a new alliance. This will seek to design and build the offshore installations that are anticipated to spring up over the next decade.\n \nThese installations will, in a large proportion of the zones, require large concrete structures, known as gravity base foundations, sitting on the seabed and into which the wind turbines can be attached. \n \nThis is where Costain comes in, explains the Director in charge of the Group's efforts in the sector, Colin Duff.\n \nBidding concluded this year between various developers and energy providers and the Crown Estates (which owns the rights to the seabed around the UK) for 'Round 3' of the licences that will allow companies access to the seabed to install the wind turbines. \n\"If everybody develops the sites they say they're going to - and that depends on how far they take Round 3, what happens to other forms of energy and our use of energy - the offshore market could be worth £200billion by 2020. The foundation element of that is £50 billion,\" says Duff.\n \nA gravity base foundation would be a flask-shaped concrete structure 30-40 metres in diameter, 60-70 metres tall and weighing around 6,000 tonnes.\n \nWinning contracts \"will come down to having an affordable, deliverable solution,\" says Duff. \"The most efficient way of achieving this is by setting up a manufacturing facility to mass produce the gravity base foundations.\"\n \nTo meet the aspirations of the government in terms of their targets for renewable energy production - of which offshore wind is a major part - the facility will have to be capable of producing a unit every two to three days\n \nThe consortium...