Volunteers from ScottishPower Renewables and its associates have come together to reduce the amount of litter on a popular Suffolk beach.

The team, made up of eight members of staff from the renewable energy company and eight from its contractors Turner Iceni and James Fisher, collected bags of rubbish along Kessingland beach on the 22^nd May as part of the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) beach cleaning and litter surveying programme, Beachwatch.

Beachwatch, which began in 1994, is an MCS initiative to involve local communities and volunteers in a practical project to clean and survey beaches all around the UK. MCS is the only national UK charity dedicated to the protection of our seas, shores and wildlife, campaigning for clean seas and beaches, sustainable fisheries, and protection of marine life.

ScottishPower Renewables’ beach cleaning day is part of the organisation’s commitment to support regional community initiatives in conjunction with the development of its East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm. The 102 turbine offshore windfarm, located approximately 30 miles off the coast of East Anglia, is planned to meet the electricity demands of up to the equivalent of 600,000 homes* once fully operational in 2020.

Gillian Sutherland, Offshore Head of Environment at ScottishPower Renewables, said: “East Anglia is home to some of the most beautiful coastal regions in the UK and ScottishPower Renewables is dedicated to helping protect and maintain the county’s beaches.

“The Kessingland beach clean provided us with the perfect opportunity to give back to a community that has been so welcoming since we began working in the region, whilst also demonstrating our commitment to protecting the environment and tackling the pollution of our coastlines.

“MCS is a fantastic charity doing valuable work and we are only too happy to join their mission to help conserve local beaches for the future.”

Notes to editors:

About East Anglia ONE:

East Anglia ONE will see 102 wind turbines installed in the southern North Sea, approx. 30 miles off the coast. The overall investment will be in the region of £2.5 billion, and the project is planned to meet the annual electricity demands of the equivalent nearly 600,000 homes*. Construction work on the East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm is well underway, with the first turbines installed by 2019, and hopes that the project will be fully operational during 2020.

East Anglia ONE Offshore Windfarm project is likely to include:

• Offshore wind turbines and foundations (102 wind turbines to provide an installed capacity of 714 megawatts).
• An offshore substation to collect the electricity from the turbines and transform it to a form suitable for transfer to shore.
• Two offshore export cables, each around 85 km in length, to transfer the electricity to shore.
• A landfall site with onshore transition pits to connect the offshore and onshore cables.
• Six onshore underground cables, each of around 37 km in length, to transfer the electricity from landfall to an onshore converter station.
• An onshore substation adjacent to the existing substation at Bramford, Suffolk, to connect the offshore windfarm to the National Grid.

*Based on the following calculation: 714 MW (installed capacity) x 0.367 “offshore wind” average load factor (Digest of UK Energy Statistics) x 8,760 hours (hours per year)/3,900kwh (average domestic annual consumption) = 588,578 homes powered equivalent