You have to get rid of gas for offshore wind farms
By Rypke Sailmaker .
The central government stated that households and neighborhoods must switch away from natural gas 'for the climate'. In reality, the forced switch to heat pumps helps keep electricity prices high, because 'sustainable' operators would otherwise make a loss, according to a report from the Court of Audit.
TenneT installs wind turbines at sea
To process the growing supply of weather-dependent energy, state-owned company TenneT must build three new high-voltage lines on land before 2030. These are billions in investments. In addition, there is the ambition to connect no less than 21 gigawatts of additional wind farms to the North Sea by 2031, up to seventy kilometers from the coast. The national government estimates costs for construction and maintenance at 26 billion euros. The consumer pays these costs through the sustainable energy surcharge (ODE) and increasing grid management costs, which TenneT settles with customers.
Before 2016, operators of offshore wind farms (such as Eneco) received a subsidy payment per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity supplied of approximately 15 cents. For example, Eneco with its Luchterduinen wind farm near Noordwijk and the operator of Gemini above Schiermonnikoog can count on 5 billion euros in electricity subsidies over 15 years. These sky-high energy subsidies became politically difficult to sell. That is why the Rutte cabinet shifted the subsidy flow from kWh subsidy to grid subsidy. The flow of subsidies literally went underground.
Until 2023, the first five offshore wind farms were financed by state-owned company TenneT without grid costs for the operators. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate paid this from extra energy tax via the sustainable energy surcharge (ODE) on your energy bill. The subsidy paid by energy consumers saved Shell, Eneco, Vattenfall and Ørsted a combined additional investment of 4 billion euros in grid subsidies. In this way, the Rutte cabinet could politically sell the offshore wind ambitions as 'subsidy-free wind farms'.
https://www.climategate.nl/2024/02/u-moet-van-gas-af-voor-windparken-op-zee/
