Lack of interest was widely expected after government failed to heed warnings about developers’ soaring costs
No new offshore windfarms will go ahead in the UK after the latest government auction, in what critics have called the biggest clean energy policy failure in almost a decade.from some of the world’s biggest renewable energy developers that the annual auction was set too low to reflect their soaring costs. No energy companies submitted bids for offshore wind projects, the government confirmed on Friday morning.
The three biggest offshore wind developers in the UK – SSE, Scottish Power and the Swedish company Vattenfall – were forced to sit out the bidding after ministers refused to increase the maximum price for the auction despite a 40% increase in the cost of manufacturing and installing turbines because of inflation.
The government’s failure to secure any new offshore windfarms was described by Greenpeace as “the biggest disaster for clean energy policy in the last eight years” because it risks jeopardising the UK’s plan to triple its offshore wind power capacity by 2030, and casts doubt on Britain’s climate targets.
But the companies and industry groups had consistently called on the government to take the higher costs into account by adjusting the maximum price they could receive, since Vattenfall announced that it wouldbecause rising costs meant it was no longer profitable. Ana Musat, RenewableUK’s executive director, told the Guardian earlier this week that the “perfectly avoidable” financial dilemma facing the British wind industry risked removing the UK’s global lead in offshore wind at a time of increased competition from the US, Europe and parts of Asia.
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