Blitz Bureau
Britain’s offshore wind sector got a boost on September 3 from the best-funded renewables auction yet, with Orsted emerging among the winners, after a sale last year failed to secure any offshore wind projects.
The Labour Government’s plans to decarbonise the electricity sector by 2030 require a big increase in renewable power capacity such as wind and solar. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband issued a statement saying the Labour administration, in power since July, had “inherited a broken energy policy” and the auction on September 3, which awarded a record number of projects, marked progress it would build on.
Powering 11 million homes The auction supported a total of 131 wind, solar and tidal projects capable of generating almost 10 gigawatts (GW) of capacity, which would be enough to power around 11 million homes, Miliband said.
The auction’s budget was the biggest yet at 1.5 billion pounds ($1.97 billion), which the government increased from 1 billion pounds after calls from industry.
Previous auctions have secured more capacity, hitting a peak of 11 GW in 2022, however, and analysts said the latest result was not enough to meet the country’s target of expanding offshore wind capacity to 60 GW by 2030 from around 15 GW now.
“With next year’s (seventh auction) being the last chance to procure capacity for delivery before 2030, an additional 31 GW of offshore wind capacity is needed to meet the target,” Pranav Menon, a research associate at Aurora Energy Research, said.
Orsted’s giant offshore wind project Hornsea 4 secured the largest contract by capacity at 2.4 GW. Country Chair Tom Glover told Reuters it was positive to see offshore wind projects in the auction, but he was disappointed two thirds of “the eligible pipeline” had been omitted when the government has said it wants to accelerate the sector.
RWE won contracts for a total of 218 megawatts of capacity across five onshore wind and solar projects.
