“Is offshore wind worth the money? Markets say yes. Banks say yes.” So said Albert Jochems, Managing Director at Green Giraffe Energy Bankers yesterday during a live webcast on offshore wind energy yesterday afternoon.
Other panellists included Michael Hannibal, Head of Siemens Wind Power Offshore and Jacopo Moccia, EWEA’s Head of Political Affairs. Throughout the webcast discussions covered all issues central to the economics of offshore wind.
While offshore wind today is more expensive than other technologies and requires huge cash flows and public support, it has an enormous potential for job and growth creation. As such it symbolises the competitiveness debate in Europe today. Should Europe go offshore as fast as possible, to bring down costs and reap the macro-economic benefits, or should it focus on the cheapest technologies? This is exactly what will be discussed in the conference at EWEA OFFSHORE 2013. And there is nowhere more fitting to discuss financing offshore wind than Europe’s financial capital – Frankfurt.
On the second day of the event, EWEA will release a new report ‘Where’s the money coming from: Financing offshore wind farms’. According to the new report, financiers say that regulatory instability is the main thing putting them off investing in the offshore wind industry. If the industry is to meet its target of 40 GW by 2020, it will need between €90 and €123 billion in funding between now and then, the report reveals. Yet the large sums themselves are not the issue: it is the instability in national regulatory and market frameworks which are endangering the target.
“There is money and willingness [to finance offshore wind projects] but in order for investors to be convinced the regulators need to establish frameworks that will last. Financiers want not only the money itself but to know there is certainty that the country is willing to develop the offshore wind sector”, says EWEA’s Jacopo Moccia
Copies of the report will be available to EWEA members attending EWEA OFFSHORE 2013 at EWEA’s stand (31C100) from 20 November.