For a man whose opponents might label him a tiresome windbag, it is unfortunate that Ed Miliband has been unable to prevent his green energy revolution from being all but blown out. [emphasis, links added]
Not that he’s having any of that, of course.
Listening to the energy secretary respond to the news that Danish renewables giant Ørsted had pulled the plug on the Hornsea 4 wind farm off the Yorkshire coast, you might wonder if the announcement had got lost in the post on its way to the Energy Department.
“We are still committed to working with Ørsted to seek to make Hornsea 4 happen by 2030,” Miliband told reporters while visiting Norway.
Yet sadly for the Energy Secretary, a “computer says no’’ approach won’t make this disappear.
Never one for dealing in inconvenient facts if it risks derailing his green mission, Miliband must now explain what this means for the Government’s plan to quadruple the UK’s offshore wind capacity by the end of the decade.
What’s more, the country has a right to know what plan B is if wind can no longer be counted on to contribute as much as expected.
Will mini-nukes become a bigger part of the mix, and if so, are they as reliable as proponents claim?
Should interconnectors become more prevalent, particularly if they can help reduce the likelihood of major blackouts, or are they too expensive and difficult to build?
Or does it mean even more pylons carpeting the countryside and disrupting the lives of those unfortunate to find themselves living in the shadows of these hulking structures?
These are the sort of tough questions that the Cabinet needs to quickly find the answers to after Ørsted decided to abandon this scheme.
The harsh reality is that this is as bad as it gets for Miliband, who is now in danger of seeing his grand net-zero vision evaporate before his eyes.
This wasn’t just one of Britain’s largest clean energy projects, it was the most significant wind farm being built in British waters.
For a Government that has staked much of its renewables push on wind energy, the mothballing of a project of this scale is nothing short of a disaster.
Hornsea 4 would have been vast. Stretching to 180 giant turbines, it promised to provide 2.4 gigawatts (GW) of power, which is enough for up to 2.6 million homes when the wind was blowing – the ever-important caveat that blinkered green champions tend to overlook when lobbying for even more of these colossal installations.
Hornsea 4 was so big that it accounted for close to half of the 5GW of offshore wind projects that ministers thought they had bagged during the last renewable auction round in 2024.
Miliband may quibble with such a grave assessment. After all, the removal of 2.4GW of power from the mix is undoubtedly a blow, but set against a target capacity of somewhere between 43GW and 50GW by 2030, one could argue it represents a dent rather than a gaping hole.
After all, the UK has 16GW of operational offshore wind capacity, and a further 28.6GW either under construction or set to be built.
Yet it is the possible knock-on effect of Ørsted’s withdrawal that ministers must now confront.
If the world’s preeminent offshore wind specialist thinks the numbers no longer stack up, then what is the likelihood of other planned projects surviving?
The odds on a string of others biting the dust have clearly just shortened unless Miliband is prepared to force taxpayers to subsidise the wind industry even further.
Rasmus Errboe, the boss of Ørsted, could hardly have sounded more bearish. The Hornsea 4 project had suffered “several adverse developments” since the company was awarded the contract, he said.
Given that was only back in September 2024, this represents a dramatic change in circumstances with Ørsted blaming rising supply chain costs, higher interest rates, and “an increase in the risk to construct and operate Hornsea 4 on the planned timeline for a project of this scale”.
Equally worrying, the company also warned of increased “execution risk”, suggesting it underestimated the difficulty of installing 180 giant turbines. If other developers aren’t at least re-evaluating their plans already, then it will be a miracle.
The possibility that Ørsted overbid and is now suffering from buyer’s remorse cannot be discounted, of course, particularly given that it’s the only party out of last year’s successful bidders to get cold feet.
But with the company prepared to fork out €500m ($563m) in “break-away” costs, maybe the economics of offshore wind no longer make sense.
When the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero acknowledges “the impact of global inflation and supply chain pressures on offshore wind projects”, something is amiss.
But such an admission leaves ministers and households on a hiding to nothing with developers almost certain to demand more generous subsidies during the next offshore wind auction later this year.
Such an outcome would propel Miliband’s already dubious promise to lower customer bills into the realms of make-believe.
Read rest at The Telegraph
So how many wants to have their view of the Atlantic spoiled by Wind Bird Harming Whale Killing Wind Turbines?