Although in office for less than a month, the new Labor government of Great Britain, under the leadership of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has already launched several significant reforms to accelerate the expansion of onshore and offshore wind energy.
The government raised the budget for the new auction round (AR6) to a record 1.85 billion euros. Most of the funds – 1.3 billion euros – will be available for offshore wind, which is fixed at the bottom.
That is 38 percent more than the budget for offshore wind farms proposed by the previous UK government, and the association Wind Europe estimated that this move will enable increased use of offshore wind. Successful projects are expected to be announced in September.
The Labor government has also lifted a de facto ban on onshore wind in England and wants to promote seabed leasing.
Wind energy has been recognized as a key tool for achieving the new government’s targets to fully decarbonise UK electricity consumption by 2030, as well as to double onshore wind capacity and quadruple offshore wind capacity by 2030.
Association Wind Europe welcomes the decision of the British government because, as they state in the announcement, they saw that inflation and higher input costs increased the cost of developing new offshore wind farms.
“Increasing the overall budget for AR6 is the right thing to do. This, in combination with the already agreed higher price limit for individual offers of 86.6 euros/MWh, will lead to strong industry interest and healthy competition,” the association’s press release reads.
It is also added that in the previous round of the auction in 2023, the government failed to take into account these new price realities and kept a strict price ceiling of 52 euros/MWh. The outcome of the auctions was devastating – not a single bid for the offshore wind farm project was submitted, as a result of which Great Britain lost a year of developing wind farms of this type.
Energy portal
Source: energetskiportal.rs
