The 1.5 GW Mona offshore wind farm, owned by JERA Nex BP, and the 480 MW Morecambe, owned by Copehnagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), have entered into lease with the Crown Estate.
The developers secured the project sites in the Irish Sea in the Crown Estate’s UK Round 4 leasing at the beginning of 2021. The Crown Estate said on 29 January that the two projects entered lease “after just three years”, having signed Agreements for Lease in 2023.
The term of the Agreements for Lease is for a maximum of ten years. By entering into lease agreements, the project owners committed to at least three years of option payments, which reduce as a project moves into a lease and cease when a lease for the maximum capacity/whole site is granted, at which point developers will move to paying rent.
The 480 MW Morecambe, proposed to be built approximately 30 kilometres from the Lancashire coast, was granted the Development Consent Order (DCO) by the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero in December 2025.
The project, planned to comprise 35 wind turbines, is being developed by Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP) on behalf of CIP, which acquired full ownership of the project at the beginning of 2025 from Cobra Group and Flotation Energy.
The 1.5 GW Mona offshore wind farm is one of the two projects in the UK which JERA Nex BP owned together with EnBW until recently, when the German company decided to withdraw from the projects. JERA Nex BP took full ownership of Mona, while the parnets decided to discontinue the other 1.5 GW project, Morgan.
The Mona offshore wind farm was granted development consent in July 2025.
The Crown Estate said on 29 January that it was working through arrangements for the Morgan offshore wind project following the announcement from JERA Nex bp and EnBW that they were no longer looking to continue with the project.
“The Crown Estate is now reviewing options and will update the market separately in due course” , the UK seabed manager said.