UK energy companies compete for £100 billion wind projects

Future plans for wind projects, 50 times the size of any large wind farm today, are now underway. To be constructed off the UK coast, the project is anticipated to be valued at £100 billion.

The project is too large for any energy firm to handle alone. It is expected that deals will be given to consortiums of major utilities.

It is more likely that Vattenfall and Scottish Power will take the five-gigawatt wind farm to be built in Norfolk’s coast. The Norfolk wind farm will be three times larger compared to the massive London Array wind park, which is currently operating in the Thames Estuary, soon to be named as Europe’s biggest wind farm when its 341 turbines go online by 2012.

Meanwhile, another energy consortium called Forwind, which includes RWEnpower Renewables, Statkraft, Scottish & Southern Energy and StatoilHydro, is believed to be in the lead for an even larger project, North Sea’s 10GW Dogger Bank wind farm.

Other available plots to be named are the one-gigawatt wind farm near Hastings, 2.5GW project in Humber Estuary, five-gigawatt zone in the Irish Sea and a few smaller wind parks in various locations.

The decisions are due to be officially announced by the end of 2009 by the Crown Estate, the organization responsible for licensing offshore wind parks.

The £100 billion wind project is the third and most ambitious round of licensing in the UK’s history, with the aim to revolutionize the country’s offshore wind industry. The construction of wind farms is expected to require billions of pounds, with considerable subsidies coming from the UK government’s green taxes.