John Swinney hails ‘era-defining’ scope of floating offshore wind

Hello and welcome to our daily digest of business, financial and economic news from around Scotland.

1. The first minister has said that floating offshore wind is an “era-defining opportunity” for the Scottish economy.

John Swinney said a thriving renewables sector was key to his government’s ambitions as he opened the Floating Offshore Wind conference in Aberdeen on Wednesday. He added that the northeast of Scotland could be a “powerhouse” in the switch to low-carbon energy.

It came as it emerged that a maintenance programme for Scotland’s first floating offshore wind farm has been completed in Norway. All five turbines from the Hywind Scotland wind farm were towed to the Wergeland Base site in Gulen for work before being reinstalled.

Equinor and Masdar, the operators