After working for over a year to formulate a bid for offshore wind farms in the North Sea, the large energy company Vattenfall has to say no. The largest offshore wind tender in Danish history offers too few conditions for creating a business for Vattenfall to risk the investment.
This is what Head of Communications Rasmus Helveg Petersen says after the deadline for bids to build the farms passed on Thursday at 2 p.m.
- We have thought about it very carefully and looked at it from all angles, and we cannot make ends meet. There is not a solid enough business case for us to commit to the large investment, he says.
Vattenfall had great interest in the area, and the decision not to bid is therefore taken with concern. The company already has several offshore wind farms in the area and would like to supplement it.
- Of course, it annoys us because we think it is an interesting site. It is a good place to build offshore wind because there is a lot of wind out there and there is a good seabed, says Rasmus Helveg Petersen.
The tender is the largest in Danish history. It can potentially provide new offshore wind for 9 gigawatts. In comparison, the largest park so far has one gigawatt of power. The design of the tender has been surrounded by great debate. It is based on the premise that the energy companies must pay money to the state to build and operate the offshore wind farms.
This logic is based on the experience from the tender for the Thor offshore wind farm, where offshore wind had become such a good business that the state could make money from it rather than provide state aid. Since then, the market has hit a major downturn, and prices have risen for the companies. Therefore, doubts have been raised about whether some would bid on the tender, when it was a premise that the state would have to pay for the production.
At Vattenfall, Rasmus Helveg Petersen will not say exactly where their calculations went wrong, but the element may be decisive.
- We do not have any comments on the political aspect. For us, this has been an assessment of whether we can make a business case on the given basis, and we cannot, he says.
It is not yet clear which other companies have failed to bid or which have ended up bidding.
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