Offshore wind farms hopes becalmed as key auction flops
No new offshore wind farms have been commissioned in a key auction, dealing a blow to the Government’s hopes of decarbonising the UK'S electricity production.
In the annual auction which lets companies bid to supply the grid with electricity, many onshore wind projects and solar farms bid to get a contract.
However, no offshore wind contracts, seen as the backbone of the UK’S green electricity ambitions, were included this year, the government announced.
It puts a dent in ministers’ promise to deliver 50 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030, from 14 GW today.
Wind farm builders had warned for months that the government, which sets a maximum price that companies are allowed to charge, was not takingintoaccounthowmuchtheir costshadsoaredduringthecostof-living crisis, which has also pusheduppricesforbusinesses.
“The economics simply did not stand up,” the boss of Scottishpower said on Friday after the result.
Energy and climate change minister Graham Stuart said: “Offshore wind is central to our ambitions to decarbonise our electricitysupplyandourambition to build 50GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, including up to 5GW of floating wind, remains firm.
“Theukinstalled300newturbines last year and we will work with industry to make sure we retain our global leadership in this vital technology.”
One industry source said: “There is no offshore wind and that’s the backbone of our transition to clean energy and attempts to stop using gas, which must be a worry for Government.”
In a press release, the Government said that the scheme was “set to deliver 3.7 GW of homegrown energy”. It did not mention that last year’s auction granted contracts for 11 GW.
The UK has for years been a world leader in offshore wind, second only to China in the amount of power that its turbines can produce.
Ithasbeenamajorbritishsuccess story and helped customers save hundreds of millions of pounds during the recent energy crisis.
Expertswarnedthatthiscould lead to higher energy bills for British households. Producing offshorewindusedtobeexpensive, but after years of innova
tion and building up scale, the price of supplying wind power to British homes had dropped dramatically.
New offshore wind turbines nowproduceelectricityataconsiderably cheaper rate than gas power plants.
The price of gas has soared afterrussia'sfull-scaleinvasion of Ukraine.
Keith Anderson, the boss of Scottishpower, which is one of the key builders of wind power in the UK, said that offshore wind is still one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity.
“This is a multibillion-pound lost opportunity to deliver low-cost energy for consumers, and a wakeupcallforgovernment,”hesaid. “Scottishpower is in the business of building wind farms and our track record is secondto-none in terms of getting projects over the line when others haven’tbeenableto.buttheeconomics simply did not stand up this time around.”
Greenpeace UK’S policy director, Doug Parr, said: “This monumental failure is the biggest disaster for clean energy in almost a decade.”