Iberdrola Renewable’s decision to cut its investment in British wind farms to the tune of £300million must have come as a huge blow to the government. Despite the recession, there is still enormous pressure on them to act to tackle climate change and decrease the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels.
The Times carried the story on its front page and painted a pretty bleak picture for development of wind power in the UK. Jonathon Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development Commission, was quoted as saying “we are way off the pace”. Duncan Ayling of the BWEA calls for “strategic leadership from the highest levels…We are only going to do this if the government tackle these problems head on”. Damning stuff, but how can anyone blame a foreign investor for pulling out of a project if they feel it does not make economic sense?
Funding seems to be a problem across the board, and falling oil and gas prices have been coupled with bearuacratic delays in obtaining access to the national grid and planning permission. One cannot help but feel unsurprised when investors are not queing up to pump hundreds of millions into UK wind energy projects.
However, Gordon Brown has targeted generating 35% of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. It currently stands at 5%. This investment must come and even if these targets are not met, there will still be a massive increase the renewables sector in the UK and jobs will be created.
The question is not so much if, rather when and how?
Read more here
- Iberdrola to slash UK wind investment 40 per cent
- Renewable energy expansion
- Jonathon Porritt’s blog
Will Dawson is a Recruitment Consultant in the Executive Hire team at FreshMinds Talent, and is in charge of developing our oil and gas sector offering.
on Mar 31st, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I’m not sure that wind is really the answer to our energy crisis, so this is probably a positive thing in the long run. Germany is the largest wind energy producer in Europe - around 5% of its capacity is produced through wind. Getting to that point alone has maxed out most of the available space for energy generation, so its difficult to visualise a country with a higher percentage of its energy produced through wind power.
With the UK being a small island, wind isn’t massively practical. It also highlights the inconsistency of the environmental lobby, who can’t seem to make up their minds whether they’d rather have more eyesores, or a more sustainable planet.
As regards making economic sense for investors - many of the wind developments in the UK have only been put in place through large subsidies to energy firms. As soon as those subsidies go, so will the investment.
on Jun 6th, 2009 at 2:30 am
I have found what i was looking for !!! thx )
on Jun 9th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
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