The UK on Wednesday awarded a record-breaking 8.4 gigawatts (GW) capacity of offshore wind in its latest auction round, which puts Britain “firmly on track to achieve its clean power mission by 2030,” the government said.
The Contracts for Difference AR7 auction secured offshore wind capacity capable of generating enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 12 million UK homes.
“The results deliver the biggest single procurement of offshore wind energy in British and European history – confounding the global challenges facing the industry – a major vote of confidence in the UK’s new era of energy sovereignty and abundance,” the UK government said in a statement.
Projects in all parts of the UK, including Scotland and the first Welsh project to win a contract in more than a decade, won in the offshore wind tender.
The government also noted that offshore wind is cheaper to build and operate than new gas-fired power generation. In new figures published on Wednesday using the LCOE industry metric, the cost of building and operating a new gas fired power station is £147, or $198, per megawatt hour (MWh). By contrast, the results for fixed offshore wind in today’s auction were £90.91, or $122, per MWh on average. That’s 40% cheaper than the cost of building and operating new gas-fired generation, the UK government said.
With the latest record-breaking auction, Britain is “taking back control of its energy, and lowering bills for good,” the cabinet noted.
The UK aims to have at least 43 GW of offshore wind by 2030 to meet its clean power target. To compare, current offshore wind capacity is 16.6 GW while another 11.7 GW is under construction.
Despite the offshore wind auctions returning back on track, the UK will find it very challenging to connect all these projects to the grid and have it running 95% on clean energy, including renewables and nuclear, analysts say.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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