Author Topic: UK offshore wind is dead in the water – as predicted  (Read 467 times)

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Offline rangerrebew

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UK offshore wind is dead in the water – as predicted
« on: July 21, 2023, 06:03:30 am »
UK offshore wind is dead in the water – as predicted
Thursday 20th July 2023 | Press Release
 
London, 20 July – As one of the world’s biggest windpower developers halts its top UK wind project and warns about further cancellations, Net Zero Watch reminds ministers that they have been warned for years about this inevitable fiasco.

Vattenfall, an international mega-developer of windpower, has put the UK’s giant 1.4 GW offshore wind project Boreas on ice, claiming that rising costs have made the Contract for Difference, awarded last year for £45/MWh (2023 prices), uneconomic (“Key UK offshore wind project axed in blow to climate plans“).


Net Zero Watch, amongst others (see publications listed below), has long warned that the low CfD bids made in the UK had no basis in economic reality. The capital and operating costs of wind power, particularly offshore are still very high. This technology is unattractive and imposes very high system costs when compared to gas generation even at today’s elevated prices. It is completely uneconomic if the gas prices continue to revert to their historic levels.

Net Zero Watch notes that Vattenfall has said it will be considering the future of all is wind projects in the Norfolk zone, with a total of 4.2 GW, placing pressure on the UK government to make extra support available to ensure construction and meet the targets for offshore wind.

Professor Gordon Hughes (University of Edinburgh), the author of many of the studies exposing the reality of wind power costs, said:

https://www.netzerowatch.com/uk-offshore-wind-is-dead-in-the-water-as-predicted/
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth.  George Washington - Farewell Address