January 2010: Licenses issued for £100bn wind farm schemes

A range of companies including Europe’s leading energy groups have been awarded licenses to develop wind farms off the coast of Britain.
The £100bn investment programme, which would make Britain a world leader in  offshore wind has been compared, in terms of it’s scale and wider economic impact, to the development of North Sea Oil in the [...]

A range of companies including Europe’s leading energy groups have been awarded licenses to develop wind farms off the coast of Britain.

The £100bn investment programme, which would make Britain a world leader in  offshore wind has been compared, in terms of it’s scale and wider economic impact, to the development of North Sea Oil in the 1970s.

The big winners were Centrica, Scottish and Southern Energy, RWE of Germany and Iberdrola of Spain.

Although the announcement is certainly a step-forward for development of the UKs renewable energy capacity the development of the projects will still depend upon their commercial viability; the development costs associated with off-shore wind energy schemes are very substantial.

Sarwjit Sambhi, managing Director of power generation at Centrica, said “Developing wind energy assets in the Irish Sea zone could dramatically increase our wind energy output.. but these projects are still considered very risky by the investment community.”

John Ditchfield 10/01/2010