Offshore Wind Runs Into Rising Costs and Delays

3 years ago by silence7 to c/energy

Some troubled projects are raising concerns about the role to be played by offshore wind farms in tackling climate change.

PlaidBaron 7 points 3 years ago

Seems likes a typical rapid growth problem. Demand is high and production hasnt caught up yet.

Good news in the long run.

save

path: 0 2192628, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 3

silence7 3 points 3 years ago

It's also an interest rate problem. Renewables substitute interest payments for a large up-front capital investment for fuel payments over the useful life of the project. When interest rates rise, it makes renewables less attractive.

save

path: 0 2192628 2192747, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2

MrMakabar 2 points 3 years ago

EU ETS 1 certificates are at 82€/t right now. The number of certificates is going to be reduced to 45% of 1990s level of the EU27. That should take care of fuel payments.

The issue here is that a lot of EU countries had massive offshore wind auctions. Germany just had a 7GW North Sea auction, a few months ago. This means higher demand for specialized hard to built equipment and specialized workers. This is not stuff you can just built in a week either, but specialized ships and so forth.

save

path: 0 2192628 2192747 2193977, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

CookieJarObserver -1 points 3 years ago

save

path: 0 2192628 2192747 2214349, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0

imsodin 2 points 3 years ago

I hope it costs those companies a ton of money to walk away from the auctioned contracts. Sounds like a typical problem of many public construction projects: They get evaluated on cost only, many companies (in bad faith or not) bid at too low prices and thus get the contract over other companies which might be much better set up to get the project to completion in time/in budget/on good standards. And as they are better set up, they likely have a better handle on real costs - as in actual subject experts evaluate costs, not just some sales/business people making optimistic estimates ("guesstimates"). And maybe even finance people thinking about stuff like possible higher inflation ahead of time and counting that in/hedging against that (not sure if hedging on inflation is a thing, but then again almost everything seems to be a thing in finance so I assume it is :P ).

save

path: 0 2206449, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0