Dong Energy A/S, the world’s biggest offshore wind developer, said neither a British departure from the EU nor the precipitous drop in oil prices would derail its plan to invest £6 billion (US$8.6 billion) in wind farms off the UK coast by the end of the decade.
The Danish utility plans to push ahead with three projects totaling 1.5 gigawatts by 2020, Brent Cheshire, head of Dong’s UK unit, said in an interview in London.
Dong expects to make a final investment decision on a fourth offshore wind farm, which at 1.2 gigawatts would be the world’s biggest, “in the next few weeks,” he said.
Oil’s decline “has no impact on our investment profile for renewable energy,” Cheshire said. “We’ve made the investment decisions we’ve made up to 2020. There won’t be any impact” from a British decision to leave the EU.
The comments are a vote of confidence in the UK’s commitment to offshore wind technology, the only major renewable energy source not to face cutbacks in subsidies since British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives won the election in May last year. Britain already has more than half of Europe’s total installed offshore wind capacity and Dong’s new projects would help the country keep its lead.
Cheshire’s remarks are also good news for renewables, which face a competitive threat from fossil fuel alternatives as oil plummeted more than 70 percent in the past 18 months.
Dong has already spent about £6 billion in the UK, almost £5 billion of which went for offshore wind. That has helped costs for new projects fall to as low as £114 per megawatt-hour last year.
A price of 100 euros (US$109) is “attainable” for projects agreeing contracts in 2020 and building three years later based on current technology and bigger supply chains, Cheshire said.
“We want to be competitive with combined cycle gas turbines by the mid-2020s,” he said.
“That means you’ve got to get these very big turbines” with a capacity of more than 10 megawatts, he said.
To persuade manufacturers such as Vestas Wind Systems A/S and Siemens AG to develop such machines, governments must provide certainty on long-term demand, Cheshire said.
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