The offshore wind industry celebrated another milestone yesterday, after the Dutch government confirmed plans for a 700MW project in the North Sea that will be built under ‘subsidy-free’ terms. Swedish utility Vattenfall beat Statoil and Innogy in an auction process for the right to develop two 350MW zones known as Hollandse Kust I and II. Under the rules of the auction, the Dutch government only accepted bids that could undercut wholesale power prices, effectively making the resulting price support contracts ‘subsidy-free’. The news comes in the same week as a major new report from Aurora Energy Research detailed how plummeting renewables costs mean up to €180bn of investment in renewables projects could be mobilised by 2030, including €64bn in ‘subsidy-free’ projects that could deliver up to 18GW of new capacity at negligible subsidy cost to governments and billpayers. The Hollande Kust projects, which are expected to provide enough power for one million Dutch homes, will now be developed by Nuon, Vattenfall’s Dutch subsidiary. They are scheduled to come online by 2022.
Business Green 20th March 2018 read more »