Another blow has been dealt to tidal power in Scotland.
Renewable energy developer Atlantis has dropped its plan to develop a tidal project near Kylerhea in Skye.
The company said it had returned an agreement for lease (AFL) for an area of seabed to the Crown Estate following a review of its portfolio.
It has also handed back an AFL for a site at Anglesey Skerries in Wales. The Crown Estate manages areas of seabed around the UK.
Tim Cornelius, chief executive of Atlantis, said: “This strategy will enable us to focus our resources on our most developed sites in order to drive progress and deliver continuous, clean, and predictable supplies of energy, quickly and at scale, to power homes and business throughout the UK and contribute towards the UK’s energy infrastructure needs.
“Due to the abundance of natural resource and a supportive government, Wales remains a jurisdiction of high interest to Atlantis and we will continue to actively seek out commercially and financially viable project development and investment opportunities and would welcome commercial approaches from any developer with commercial scale project locations in Wales.”
Survey work and data from both project sites will be made publicly available through The Crown Estate’s Marine Data Exchange in order to support the sustainable development of the seabed over the long term.
Atlantis has been pushing ahead with MeyGen, another tidal project in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth.
Late last year, four subsea cables were laid for this tidal energy scheme in the stretch of water separating the north Caithness coast and Orkney.
About six miles (11km) of cable in total were put down to allow electricity generated by four tidal turbines to reach the nearby shore.
Atlantis, the majority owner of the project, eventually plans to have up to 269 turbines on the seabed.
