Slow lane for UK's crucial offshore wind auction

Winners of the UK’s crucial AR7 auction round for offshore wind won’t be told until next year it emerged this week, as energy secretary Ed Miliband pushed back against swelling political opposition to his net-zero policies.

The process kicked off with a month-long qualification assessment ending 26 September. Under the fastest possible timeline for the subsequent auction, developers would have heard they were set to be offered a contract for difference (CfD) deal a few weeks before Christmas. That, however, depended on no reviews being sought by applicants ruled out during the qualification assessment.

That means that projects won’t be notified of the outcome until 16 January at the earliest. A second tier of appeal is also available following the first review, which if activated would push notification into mid-February.

Previous CfD rounds in the UK have typically seen the results for renewables projects published in early September.

Jordan May, a senior analyst at TGS 4C Offshore, who flagged that the shortest timeline was off the table when the UK government failed to issue a budget notice earlier this week as scheduled under the fast-lane timetable, said offshore wind’s AR7 process was this time split off from that for onshore wind and solar in order to speed up the former. “This appears to have backfired,” he wrote on Linkedin.

'Two roads for Britain'

UK energy security and net zero secretary Ed Miliband this week told the annual conference of industry group Energy UK that he would set the initial budget for AR7 “in the coming weeks” as he hit back against mounting political opposition to Britain’s net-zero policies, including largely decarbonising its power network by 2030.

The right-wing populist Reform party, which is leading opinion polls, and now the Conservative Party – which backed offshore wind when in government – have hardened their positions, with policies that include widespread dismantling of support for green power build-out and scrapping CfDs.

Miliband said: “There are two roads opening up for Britain, in a way that hasn’t been true for the last two decades.

“One road, a sprint to clean power, a partnership between industry and government.

“The other road, doubling down on our exposure to fossil fuels and turning our back not just on the progress in clean energy of the last 15 months but on the partnership of government and business over many decades.”