UK - Crown Estate to invest £5 billion over the next 25 years from new offshore windfarms

Hard bargaining by the managers of the Queen's property empire will earn the Crown Estate an astonishing £5 billion over the next 25 years from new offshore windfarms. The massive boost to income - most of which will go to the Treasury - comes after Crown Estate negotiators stunned energy bosses by tripling the fees to allow them to build and run wind turbines off the UK coast as part of a massive increase in wind energy. The Crown Estate owns the seabed up to 12 nautical miles (14 miles) off the coast and so has the right to grant licences to build any wind turbines in UK waters

Leading energy groups have been in talks on winning licences for the third and largest round of offshore windfarms. The results of the bidding will be delivered to Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband this week while the energy groups themselves will learn whether their bids have been successful next week. The winners are expected to include Britain's ScottishPower and Centrica, Swedish stateowned energy group Vattenfall, and Germany's Eon and RWE.

At stake are nine huge offshore zones with a total area the size of Wales. In the first wave of talks the Crown Estate agreed to a fee of £1 per megawatt hour of electricity generated by the wind turbines, but sources close to the negotiations said that in the latest negotiations it had trebled the fee. The price rise will earn the Crown Estate more than £250 million a year once the wind turbines are up and running. The first are expected to be in place by 2015. Over the 20 years of the licences the total revenue will be more than £5 billion. The extra cost is likely to be passed on to customers in their energy bills.

The Crown Estate, which dates back to 1066, gives all its profits to the Treasury - an arrangement set up by George III when he came to the throne in 1760. In return the Treasury pays the running costs of the Royals. The Crown Estate has a £6billion property portfolio and made a profit last year of £226.5 million.

For more information please contact Trevor Sievert at ts@widnfair.net