Development on one of the UK’s largest offshore wind farms has been paused due to growing costs, prompting concern across the industry as reliance on the technology grows.
Vattenfall’s 1.4GW Norfolk Boreas project, which was due to be built 72km off the East Anglian coast to power around 1.5mln homes, was shelved on Thursday.
“Considering market conditions, today we are stopping the current development track for Norfolk Boreas,” chief executive of the Swedish firm, Anna Borg, said.
She added the company would also evaluate “the best way forward for all three projects in the Norfolk zone,” which were set to have a combined output of 4.2GW.
Squeezed supply chains, alongside increasing prices and capital costs, prompted the decision, Borg added, which was made despite publicly subsidised price guarantees on the energy sold from the wind farm.
Vattenfall secured a contract-for-difference for the Norfolk Boreas project last year, which would have effectively guaranteed the firm got £45 for each megawatt hour of energy sold from the farm.
“It’s deeply concerning when a project that was already underway is stopped in its tracks,” industry body Energy UK said, given the country’s growing reliance on wind power.
“The contracts for difference scheme has been instrumental in the creation of this world-leading industry but […] the government needs to recognise the much-changed economic picture for developers.”
Energy UK added the contract for difference scheme would likely need updating if Britain was to meet a targeted 50GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.
"[This] should be a wake-up call," the group added, especially given Britain's offshore capacity has a long way to go from its capacity of just 8.4GW in December 2022.