For years, the government has boasted of ambitious goals for a massive expansion of offshore wind in the North Sea. But now the government is lowering its ambitions.
Where the goal so far has been to build up to nine gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, the goal is now to get two to three gigawatts of offshore wind up in the same year. This is what Climate Minister Lars Aagaard (M) said on Friday.
- This means that we will not build as many gigawatts within that period. It will not happen, he says.
The announcement is the culmination of a long-term decline in the wind market. When the government set the target of nine GW of offshore wind, the industry and the political level were full of optimism.
Offshore wind had become such a good business that the state had to make money from it, which became the condition for the largest tender for offshore wind in Danish history, which collapsed without a bid shortly before Christmas.
- There are new conditions in the wind industry, says Lars Aagaard.
The market has plunged, and the energy companies will not build offshore wind farms under the previous premises, which included, among other things, that they had to pay money to the state to produce the offshore wind.
The Ministry of Climate Change will therefore clean up wind policy now. A tender with a deadline of April 1 is being cancelled and instead the focus is on setting up new tenders with state support that will deliver two to three gigawatts of wind in 2030 instead.
Question: Have there been overoptimistic dreams for wind expansion?
- I don't want to point fingers at previous governments and other parties, and I don't want to point fingers at the industry either. It was a collective expectation that we could expand offshore wind at an enormous pace without the state having to take on financial risks. We are now finding that the world has not developed that fantastically in the short term, says Lars Aagaard.
/ritzau/
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