I WISH to add some comments to Christine Grahame's letter (October 20) about the Hywind floating wind farm off Peterhead.
Although Statoil are the main developer, 25 per cent of the development is owned by Masdar from Abu Dhabi, another part of the world that has benefited enormously from the development of its oil and gas resource. Indeed Abu Dhabi probably has the world's second largest Sovereign Wealth Fund after Norway.
The Hywind Project is a “demonstration” project and therefore qualifies to receive an enhanced subsidy of 3.5 ROCs per MWh. The project cost is around £200million. Its installed capacity is 30MWs. The electricity produced will attract a total payment of four to five times the current GB market price.
It could be argued that such an arrangement is justified for this relatively small- sized pioneering offshore windfarm to demonstrate the new “floating”' technology. But as Ms Grahame points out, this wind farm was designed, built, installed and will be operated by Statoil/Masdar. Any lessons learned from this demonstration windfarm, and the technical advances made, will belong to the developer, but the cost will have been footed by the GB consumers.
Two of the richest countries in the world have taken our GB energy policy for a ride.
Nick Dekker,
1 Nairn Way, Cumbernauld.
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