Norway opens floating offshore wind tender
OSLO, May 19 (Reuters) - Norway has launched the first part of its long-awaited inaugural floating wind tender, it said on Monday, offering subsidies to the winners despite the challenges faced by the global offshore wind industry.
The industry has grappled with skyrocketing costs, higher interest rates and supply chain bottlenecks, prompting governments to halt or postpone tenders due to a lack of interest from bidders.
In a first step, the process foresees bidders being awarded the rights to develop commercial projects of up to 500 megawatts (MW) in capacity at the Utsira Nord site off the country's south-west coast.
The winners will then have two years to mature the projects before competing in an auction for subsidies in 2028-2029, to be provided as a direct grant.
"Utsira Nord is an important first step in the development of commercial floating offshore wind development on the Norwegian continental shelf," Norway's Energy Minister Terje Aasland said in a statement.
Norway has agreed to cap total subsidies at Utsira Nord at 35 billion Norwegian crowns ($3.37 billion), reflecting the technology's relative immaturity.
"The model for allocating project areas and state support is adapted to floating offshore wind and will contribute to both technology development and cost reductions for subsequent projects," Aasland said.
Norway is not part of the European Union but participates in the bloc's internal market, requiring it to comply with EU rules, including on state aid, a process that is managed by the EFTA surveillance authority (ESA).
The latter approved Norway's proposal to tender acreage suitable for floating wind farms at Utsira Nord in April.
Floating wind turbines are deemed particularly suitable for greater water depths where fixing the foundation into the seabed is not possible.
Norway awarded a first bottom-fixed offshore wind farm licence in 2024 but will focus solely on floating wind farm development when it next announces new tenders.
($1 = 10.3723 Norwegian crowns)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
19 hours ago
- Reuters
Russia's Sechin says China is moving towards exporting energy
ST PETERSBURG, Russia, June 21 (Reuters) - Rosneft ( opens new tab CEO Igor Sechin, one of the most influential men in Russia's energy sector, said on Saturday that China was seeking complete energy independence and that in the foreseeable future it could become a major energy exporter. China's economic and military rise over the past 45 years is considered to be one of the most significant geopolitical events of recent times, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union which ended the Cold War. Sechin said that a massive increase in electricity consumption was changing the entire landscape of the global energy markets as populations soared in Africa and Asia and the digital revolution triggered massive demand for power. Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Sechin said that China accounted for a third of global investment in the energy sector, was ramping up renewable energy capacity and was now one of the leaders in nuclear power. "China, which has already ensured its energy security, is confidently moving towards complete energy independence, forming a stable energy balance based on its own resources," Sechin said in a speech which referenced both Greek mythology and Niccolo Machiavelli. "There is no doubt, taking into account the persistence and professionalism of our Chinese comrades, that in the foreseeable future they will achieve the desired result, which will turn China from an importer of energy resources into a major energy exporter." China is currently the world's largest importer of crude oil and a major importer of natural gas. Russia is the world's second largest oil exporter and holds the world's largest reserves of natural gas. Sechin, who worked alongside Vladimir Putin in the former imperial capital of St Petersburg and later under the president in the Kremlin, has run Rosneft since 2012. Rosneft accounts for about 40% of Russian oil production, 14% of the country's gas production and 32% of the refinery market. It is also the biggest Russian exporter of oil to China. Sechin said that the decision by OPEC+ to speed up an output increase now looked far-sighted and justified in the light of the confrontation between Israel and Iran. He added that the OPEC+ group could bring forward its output hikes by around a year from the initial plan. He drew attention to the vast U.S. debt pile, warning that great powers from Habsburg Spain and pre-Revolutionary France to the Ottoman Empire and Britain had declined due to high levels of public debt. The expansion of the Western military-industrial complex was diverting enormous resources away from productive sectors and unlikely to be a panacea for the problems in Europe or the United States, Sechin said. "There is always an asymmetrical answer," he added. But his focus was on China's role, giving the example how the growth in the sales of electric vehicles had resulted in significant slowdown in motor fuel demand over the last year. "If this trend continues – it may have a significant reverse impact on the oil market balance," Sechin said. He added than an important part of China's strategy to reduce dependence on energy imports was the processing of coal into synthetic fuels and chemical products. About 40 million tons of coal is used to produce synthetic fuels and more than 260 million tons for ammonia and methanol production, he said.
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- The Guardian
Ancient trees are shipped to the UK, then burned – using billions in ‘green' subsidies. Stop this madness now
How green is this? We pay billions of pounds to cut down ancient forests in the US and Canada, ship the wood across the Atlantic in diesel tankers, then burn it in a Yorkshire-based power station. Welcome to the scandal of Drax, where Britain's biggest polluter gets to play climate hero. The reality is that billions in public subsidies has enabled Drax to generate electricity by burning 300m trees. Now the government is trying to force through an extension that would grant Drax an estimated £1.8bn in public subsidies on top of the £11bn it has already pocketed, keeping this circus going until at least 2031. This isn't green energy. The mathematics alone should horrify anyone who cares about value for money or the environment. Burning wood creates 18% more CO2 emissions than coal. Even if you replant every tree Drax destroys, it takes up to a century for new growth to reabsorb the carbon released. We're supposed to reach net zero by 2050, not 2125. Yet through circus-trick accounting, all of Drax's massive emissions magically disappear from Britain's climate ledger. They've simply been wished away – counted as 'zero', while the company becomes our largest single contributor to climate breakdown. Extraordinarily, this scandal unites opposition across the political spectrum. From the Greens to Reform, from the Morning Star to the Daily Telegraph, there's rare consensus that Drax represents everything wrong with our approach to climate policy. The Labour-dominated public accounts committee condemned Drax as a 'white elephant' that's been allowed to 'mark its own homework' while claiming 'billions upon billions' in subsidies. A Lords committee agreed, saying parliament needs to see key documents before approving any more funding. I don't agree with Ed Miliband on everything – we clearly have different views on nuclear power. I respect the energy secretary's commitment to tackling climate crisis, and it is worth noting that the further subsidies are half of what was previously on offer for Drax. But that's exactly why continuing to subsidise Drax at all is so disappointing. When Miliband announced his plans to 'ramp up' biomass burning back in 2009, he was genuinely trying to find alternatives to fossil fuels. But 16 years on, this policy has gone badly astray. What was meant to be a bridge to renewable energy is actually making emissions worse. If, on Monday, the House of Lords votes to extend this unabated wood burning for another four years, what is to stop these subsidies being extended again and again? And why should the government deal with a firm as untrustworthy as Drax? Perhaps most damning is what Drax refuses to reveal. After the BBC's devastating Panorama investigation into the company's destruction of Canadian primary forests, Drax asked auditor KPMG to investigate, hoping for a clean bill of health. However, the evidence was so damning that the reports are still being hidden from the public. If Drax has nothing to hide, why not publish these reports? A former top Treasury official turned whistleblower accused it of deliberately concealing unsustainable practices to secure subsidies. The case, now settled, raises questions of dishonesty that should disqualify any company from public funding. The extra billions Drax is seeking could help build enough wind and solar capacity to power millions of homes. It could create permanent jobs in genuine renewable industries, not temporary employment destroying irreplaceable ecosystems. Every pound spent subsidising tree burning is a pound not invested in technologies that could actually deliver net zero. While other countries race ahead with wind, solar and battery storage, we're burning money on the most primitive fuel known to humanity. There's a huge loophole in the government's pledge to stop Drax burning trees from primary forest. Their restrictions on Drax only apply to subsidised electricity supplied to the grid. Drax wants to power private data centres but there is no plan that prevents it from destroying ancient forests to power 21st-century AI searches. That means Drax could be cutting down even more primary forests than it does today. MPs have lost trust in the government's ability to hold Drax to account – the criticism from parliamentary committees has been brutal. The environmental movement didn't fight to establish renewable energy so politicians could facilitate the burning of ancient forests that took millennia to grow. Real climate action means making hard choices, not hiding behind accounting tricks that make our emissions disappear on paper while making them worse in reality. It is time for Labour MPs to speak up; the fight for net zero is hard enough. More subsidies for Drax's wood burning in the name of sustainability is just more fuel on that fire. Dale Vince is a green energy industrialist and campaigner
Reuters
a day ago
- Reuters
Norway oil drilling workers agree wage deal, averting strike
OSLO, June 20 (Reuters) - Norwegian labour unions have agreed to a wage deal, averting a strike at floating offshore oil and gas drilling rigs that would have disrupted exploration, unions and company representatives said on Friday evening. Unions had said that 438 workers on three rigs were prepared to strike initially if the talks failed, but no immediate disruption to oil and gas production was expected.
