Exclusive: Mainstream takes on offshore wind scaremongers

Fresh from securing the exclusive rights to develop a €1.2bn wind farm off the coast of Scotland earlier this week, Ireland-based Mainstream Renewable Power has revealed it is poised to announce plans for four more energy wind projects over the next six weeks.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Mainstream chief executive Eddie O'Connor said that despite recent reports of project delays and difficulties finding finance across the industry, there was still an extremely strong economic case for continued long-term investment in wind farm projects.

"The industry is still young and it's not for the faint hearted, bureaucratic or trivial. Well-planned projects will still prove profitable in the long term, " he said. "We are now building at a site in Chile and will announce plans for a development in another country next week… in fact, we have four major announcements in the pipeline over the next six weeks, all in the wind sector."

The expansion plans fly in the face of recent reports that the economic viability of some large-scale wind projects, and in particular more costly offshore developments, are being widely questioned. For example, energy giant E.ON, one of the backers of the high-profile London Array project, recently raised fears that the investment case for the giant wind farm had become increasingly "marginal".

However, O'Connor, who previously founded wind energy firm Airtricity before selling it to SSE and setting up Mainstream, argued that fears over the economic case for UK offshore wind farms are being overstated.

He said that raw material costs had slumped over the past year, with steel now at a third of its price a year ago, and that those falling commodity prices were beginning to filter through to the cost of wind turbines. He also noted th at the government had recently increased the financial incentives that offshore developments can claim through the Renewables Obligation scheme.

"If you are innovative and manage the projects properly, these developments are profitable in the long term," he said, adding that the UK government had set up one of the most supportive frameworks for offshore wind in the world.

However, he did reserve criticism for the continued lack of joined-up planning processes, which will ensure that despite being granted exclusive rights to develop the 360MW "Neart na Gaoithe" wind farm in the outer Forth Estuary this week, work is unlikely to begin on the development until 2014 at the earliest.

"We still have to go through an environmental assessment and that will take two years. We need to put up a wind measuring mast, which costs £2.5m compared with £15,000 on shore, and we have to apply for planning permission, must get the financials together, order the vessels and supplies, and then there is usually just a four-month window in the weather to do the work," he explained.

O'Connor said that while some of these tasks could be undertaken concurrently, there was still an urgent need for a more streamlined approach. " We need a supremo within government in charge of the whole thing," he said. " Someone who when there is an issue between different groups can come in and bang heads together."