Scottish & Southern Energy is said to be among the contenders to buy one of the world’s leading renewable energy firms. Airtricity, which is based in Ireland and is developing a portfolio of onshore and offshore wind farms, last month appointed advisers to work on the potential sale of the company. The process should be completed by the middle of next year. The business recently sold its US wind farms to German utility E.ON for £730m and could fetch the same again for its European assets, the Sunday Telegraph reported. A move by SSE would help spearhead its expansion a month after chief executive Ian Marchant recently set out plans to target the Irish market. Today’s report said SSE faced competition from several other European generators including Germany’s RWE, French group EDF and Iberdrola, the Spanish group behind the acquisition of Scottish Power earlier this year. Tough government renewable targets, together with difficulties in gaining planning permission for wind farms, should make Airtricity an attractive target. Airtricity was founded in 1999 and is both a generator and supplier of green electricity and currently supplies green electricity to more than 35,000 commercial customers in Ireland. The company is 51% owned by NTR, the former Irish national toll roads company, with the remainder in the hands of other investors. SSE, which operates as Southern Electric, Swalec and Scottish Hydro Electric, has 8.3 million energy supply customers. It also owns just over 10,000 MW of generating capacity, including 1,500 MW generated from renewable sources such as hydro-electricity plants and wind turbines.