Major offshore windfarm in the Bristol Channel is axed

The Guardian reports, 26th November 2013: “Britain’s green ambitions have been dealt a blow as a big six energy company has pulled the plug on one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms, with the political storm enveloping the industry threatening the multibillion-pound investments needed to meet emissions targets and head off a looming capacity crunch.

Weeks after warning that the government was treating environmental subsidies as a “political football”, the German-owned RWE npower is pulling out of the £4bn Atlantic Array project in the Bristol Channel because the economics do not stack up.

The shelving of the Atlantic Array is a setback for the government, which is banking on bigger wind farms in deeper waters to help provide low-carbon power. The RWE cancellation is the first axing of a Round 3 wind farm – schemes such as those in Dogger Bank, Hornsea and East Anglia, which are supposed to help the government meet a target of generating 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. It will also raise further concerns about investors being frightened away by political rows and policy uncertainty.

The Renewable Energy Association (REA), which lobbies for more low-carbon power, said government infighting over subsidies was causing deep uncertainty in the industry. “We need assurances from George Osborne in the autumn statement about where we stand,” said a spokesman for the REA. “Nick Clegg says one thing about the green levies, Michael Fallon [the energy minister] another.”

The Atlantic Array would have provided clean energy for almost 1m homes and provided thousands of jobs in the construction phase. RWE has declined to put a cost on developing the Atlantic Array but said it was more expensive than the Gwynt y Môr project off Wales, which will cost £2bn and is about half the size.

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