Today the Scottish Government boosted the subsidies for innovative offshore wind generation. A new band set at 2.5 ROCs is aimed at supporting generation from offshore test and demonstration sites deploying innovative, new to market turbines. The second new band set at 3.5 ROCs will be for pilot projects consisting of non-fixed generation – e.g. floating turbines, or those using “tension line” deployment systems.
Linda Holt, spokesperson for Scotland Against Spin commented:
The Scottish Government’s offshore wind strategy is a spectacular failure. Anticipated development is at least four years behind schedule, and international investors still aren’t stumping up – despite a guaranteed 200% subsidy on all electricity sold and millions of pounds of sweeteners from Scottish Enterprise and local councils. The promised offshore supply chain with its jobs bonanza has yet to materialise, and the grid infrastructure required by offshore windfarms is still a pipe dream. Meanwhile onshore turbines continue their relentless destructive march towards fulfilling the 2020 target for 100% renewable electricity which the politically more acceptable offshore turbines were supposed to supply the greater part of.
These new ROC rates prove that the Scottish Government is now desperately worried that not even the R&D for offshore wind development will get off the ground.
Only a day after test drilling began to pave the way for the construction of the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC) in Aberdeen Bay, Vattenfall announced that it was dumping its 75% stake in the flagship offshore turbine test facility. It said it had to “prioritise its investments”.
The truth is that offshore wind development in Scotland faces insurmountable problems. The engineering challenges of erecting and operating 200m turbines in the gruelling deep water conditions of the North Sea remain formidable. The cost – as Oxford economist Dieter Helm says – makes nuclear power look cheap. The environmental damage vast banks of turbines will wreak on marina flora and fauna will make what onshore windfarms do to peat and birds look like tiddly winks. No wonder Scotland’s most advanced offshore planning application for the Argyll Array wind farm near Tiree was mothballed last year.
International investor confidence in long-term renewable energy is ebbing away as countries such as Germany and the UK give up on new binding climate change targets. Investors in Scotland are additionally put off by the Independence referendum, and the steadfast position by the UK government that English consumers will not foot the subsidies for wind energy in an independent Scotland.
Throwing even more public money at the test facilities at Methil, Menie and elsewhere may actually get them built in time for some face-saving photo opportunities for Alex Salmond before the referendum. But it won’t change the fact that offshore wind development in Scotland is a dead duck.
8 Comments
may hurry · June 25, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Someone should sit Soapy Salmond down and insist he reads the Liberum Capital Report “A Crisis in UK Energy Policy Looks Inevitable” – this will explain in clear language why his absurd ‘wind’ energy policy cannot and will not work, as for the rest of us =
LAUGH OUT LOUD!!! LOL