Nine large European offshore wind developers have promised extra funding to the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) programme to help bring new technologies to market.
The companies – Dong Energy, EnBW, Eon, Iberdrola, RWE, SSE, Statkraft, Statoil and Vattenfall – will provide at least £6.4m over the next four years to bring new innovations to market that will help cut wind costs below £100 per MWh by 2020.
The Scottish government is also providing a further £1.5m for the programme, which is designed to impact the levelised cost of energy from offshore wind by reducing costs, improving efficiency and availability of existing and future offshore wind farms.
Carbon Trust chief executive officer Tom Delay said: “Over the last five years the cost of energy from offshore wind has decreased significantly, largely driven by a combination of innovation, risk reduction and increased deployment rates.
“But we need to continue building on this success by getting the right solutions into market quickly to put offshore wind on the path to cost competitiveness by 2020.
“The OWA has an impressive track record, providing an effective mechanism for public and private sector to work together to meet the cost reduction challenge head on.
“Its success lies in the sharing of the risks and rewards of innovation through industry-led collaborative research, development and deployment.”
EnBW senior vice president generation portfolio development Dirk Güsewell said: “Innovation and cost reduction are key for the future of offshore wind.
“EnBW believes that the OWA consortium is an excellent industry-driven vehicle to further assess which technologies will lead to these objectives.”
Image: reNEWS
