BRITISH WIND READY TO SHOULDER LOAD

Wind Energy: Mainstream Renewable Power; Wind energy is spearheading Britain’s efforts to generate 35pc of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020 because the nation has plentiful supplies.
28 April 2009 (UK Telegraph)

SUMMARY
Advocating on behalf of the UK wind industry, wind power pioneer and magnate Eddie O’Connor said the nation can rely on its rich wind resources and technologically mature industry to help it meet its emissions reduction goals and at the same time work its way out of the current economic doldrums.

Eddie O’Connor co-founded Airtricity in 1987, sold it to UK utility giant Scottish & Southern Energy for a €45 million profit in 2008 and almost immediately co-founded Mainstream Renewable Power, of which he is presently CEO. The company is currently developing onshore wind projects in Chile, Canada and South Africa and expects to own and operate 200 megawatts of installed capacity by 2010.

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O’Connor’s current big enthusiasm is for offshore wind. His company recently obtained the development rights for Neart Na Gaoithe, a £1.1 billion, 420-megawatt offshore project in the outer Forth Estuary, 30 kilometers north of Torness in Scotland. Mainstream also has the rights to the Horizonte site in the North Sea, off Germany.

Because of O’Connor’s exceptionally successful record with Airtricity, he has had significantly less difficulty finding financing than other wind developers. Wind development is not, however, without obstacles for O'Connor, obstacles that vary from one project to another.

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O’Connor’s biggest challenge in the UK is the planning and permitting process. In Texas, contracting to get the electricity his installations generate into the state's limited, out-of-date transmission system is the obstacle. In Denmark, he is forced to confront the higher level of challenges from offshore wind projects because that small nation has already built 3,300 megawatts of wind power onshore and stopped permitting new onshore projects in 2004.

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COMMENTARY
The name of O'Connor's newest project, Neart Na Gaoithe, is Gaelic. It means “strength of the wind.”

Wind power gets a lot of headlines in the UK. The Blair and Brown governments have ardently backed development. Currently, the UK wind industry faces something of a conundrum. It is getting enthusiastic popular and political backing for more development, to meet stringent emissions reduction goals, yet it is not getting the big financing it needs to go to work.

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Major investors have engaged with some of the most ambitious offshore wind projects in the world in the UK and subsequently been forced to back out due to high costs. In the face of such a discouraging dilemma, enthusiasm coming from O'Connor, a pioneering and successful wind entrepreneur, is especially affirmative.

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An executive with O’Connor’s company recently confided to NewEnergyNews that the reason they were not having as much difficulty as other developers obtaining financing was simple. The company had already earned a lot of money for some people and those people need to put their money into SOMETHING, even with value dropping all around them, so why not put it where things had previously worked out so well.

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QUOTES
- Eddie O’Connor, Co-founder/CEO, Mainstream Renewable Power: “Sixty-thousand people are employed in the wind energy industry in Germany right now…Britain has fantastic wind energy resources and there is the potential to create a lot of jobs at a time when lots of other industrial jobs are falling in number.”
- O’Connor, on Mainstream Renewable Power: “We’re involved in wind projects worldwide and we’re going to be involved in solar in ocean current projects as well – but wind is the most commercial renewable right now…”
- O’Connor, on wind’s maturity: “Over the past 15 years, it has been getting more and more mainstream and 45pc of generating capacity installed last year was for wind energy, putting it ahead of gas, coal and nuclear energy.”

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- O’Connor, on offshore wind: “Offshore wind is demonstrably more risky than onshore wind and each investing company will have its own ideas about their appetite for risk…However, 50pc of all electricity in Europe has to come from renewable sources by 2050 as part of an 80pc reduction of 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions...Project that forward and take account of the fact that Europe generates 3,380 terrawatt hours of electricity and I would predict that you’re going to have to build up to 1.6m MW of electricity generating capacity offshore. You will need to get some very big numbers if you want to guarantee energy self-sufficiency…”