LONDON --
Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering company will invest 160
million pounds ($264 million) in a wind turbine factory in northern
England to tap the world’s biggest offshore wind market.
The manufacturer will invest in two sites in
Yorkshire, with a construction, assembly and service facility at its
Green Port Hull project, and a new rotor blade factory in nearby Paull,
Siemens said today in an e-mailed statement. Associated British Ports
Holdings Plc is investing a further 150 million pounds in the Green Port
Hull development, it said.
The investment is a boost for the offshore wind
industry in the U.K., where utilities have canceled at least 5,760
megawatts of planned capacity since Nov. 26. It’s also helps for the
government, which has reformed the electricity market in an effort to
lure green investment and cut carbon emissions.
“We are attracting investment by backing enterprise
with better infrastructure and lower taxes,” U.K. Energy Secretary Ed
Davey said in a statement. “As well as helping to keep the lights on and
putting more than 1,000 people in work, this deal means we will help to
keep consumer bills down as we invest in home-grown green energy and
reduce our reliance on foreign imports.”
Britain already leads the world in offshore wind, with
22 operational farms totaling 3,653 megawatts of capacity, according to
the RenewableUK industry group. That’s more than half the global total
of 6,930 megawatts.
Siemens’s Lead
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in his
budget last week announced a plan to freeze a tax on carbon emissions
from electricity generation starting April 2016 in a bid to boost
British manufacturing and cut energy bills. The government last year
said it would pay offshore wind developers triple the market price for
electricity they generate. It expects about 10 gigawatts of total
capacity by 2020.
“The British energy policy creates a favorable
framework for the expansion of offshore wind energy,” Michael Suess, a
member of the managing board of Siemens, said in the statement. Siemens has about 2.7 gigawatts of turbines installed
in U.K. waters, or about three quarters of the total, according to
Sophia von Waldow, a London-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy
Finance. It’s been awarded contracts for another 3 gigawatts of machines
due to begin generating mainly from this year through 2019, she said.
Almost half of all new offshore wind capacity last
year was in U.K. water, according to figures from the European Wind
Energy Association. Jobs in the industry may rise to 44,000 over the
next decade from 12,800 now, according to RenewableUK.
‘Major Coup’
“This is a major coup for the British wind industry —
it’s the green-collar jobs game-changer that we’ve been waiting for,”
RenewableUK Chief Executive Officer Maria McCaffery said in an e-mailed
statement. “This is just the start. Where Siemens are leading, a cascade
of others will follow, and we’ll see very significant growth in the
U.K. supply chain.”
Dong Energy A/S, the biggest developer of offshore
wind farms, said the announcement is “a huge boost for the offshore wind
industry in this country.” The Siemens plan “demonstrates the huge opportunity to
develop a thriving supply chain,” Benj Sykes, head of Dong’s U.K. wind
operations said in a statement.
Projects Scrapped
Even with recent announcements by all of the U.K.’s
so- called “Big Six” utilities that they’re shrinking, canceling or
selling some offshore projects, RenewableUK estimates there’s a pipeline
of U.K. offshore wind projects totaling nearly 15 gigawatts. “By 2030, the U.K. offshore wind sector will need
dozens of factories making innovative, hi-tech blades, turbine towers,
cables and offshore substations,” McCaffery said.
Siemens said the Green Port Hull project will create
450 jobs, and is expected to be operational in “early 2016.” The factory
in Paull is slated for completion in the middle of that year, and will
employ 550 people, attaining full production levels in mid-2017, it
said.
“We’re starting to see the benefits of making the U.K.
a more attractive place to invest,” Nicola Walker, director of business
environment at Britain’s main business lobby group, the Confederation
of British Industry, said in a statement. “The U.K. is well placed to
become a world leader in the construction and development of renewable
energy generation.”
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/03/siemens-to-invest-264-million-in-uk-offshore-wind-plant
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