A total of nine offshore wind farm contracts have been awarded by the government after last year’s auction failed to attract any bidders at all. The contracts are part of a wider slate of green energy projects that also include tidal and solar power, and will provide enough electricity to fuel the equivalent of 11 million UK homes, the government said.
However, while the new offshore wind projects have been broadly welcomed, some experts questioned whether they would generate enough capacity to meet renewable energy targets set for 2030. Households are also facing higher energy bills later this year, with a typical bill to rise by 10%.
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On Tuesday, a total of 131 contracts have been awarded to firms for projects which will generate 9.6 gigawatts (GWs) of renewable energy.
The new offshore projects include what will be Europe’s largest and second-largest wind farms, Hornsea 3 and Hornsea 4, which will be built off the Yorkshire coast by Ørsted, the Danish energy giant that is majority-owned by the state.
The contracts are boost to the UK’s renewable energy sector, after no companies bid in the auction to build offshore wind farms last September.
Back then, the industry said the guarantee price offered by the then Conservative government for electricity generated by the wind farms did not take into account higher costs such as construction materials, which had risen because of inflation. Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottish Power, said offshore wind was “back on track after last year’s misstep”.
“It will allow investment into manufacturing in the UK. It allows the sector to get back up and running and it puts the government back on track for hitting targets, really important targets to decarbonise the sector,” he told the BBC’s Today programme. Scottish Power’s parent company Iberdrola won contracts to build capacity at its East Anglia offshore wind farm project.