The London Project is Jeopardised

It looked as though it was going to be one of the most promising and exciting renewable energy developments, not only in the UK, but in Europe itself. The London Array has been in the planning process for 7 years now. It had to overcome environmental concerns, feasibility studies, meteorological studies, marine studies, you name it and it was studied. The consortium included three partners, E.ON UK, DONG Energy of Denmark and Dutch Shell Wind Energy, all contributing to bring this ambitious project to reality.

Just what is the London Array all about, firstly. It’s all about generating electricity using wind power – and not just any old wind power, this is an offshore wind power project and huge proportions. The plan is to construct 341 wind turbines 20km off the Kent and Essex shore in the outer Thames Estuary. The result will be around 1,000MW of electricity generated free of polluting fossil fuels. That’s enough energy to power around 750,000 homes every year.

Costs were rising, what with the rise in demand of wind turbine components and the price of steel continuing up. The budget for the project had blown out from £1 billion in 2003 to more than £2.5 billion forecast for the next year or so.

But that still didn’t prepare everyone for the bombshell that Shell dropped on both its consortium partners and the UK government on May 1, 2008. Shell announced that they were selling out of their share in the London Array project and were planning to focus their attention on easier on-shore wind energy options in the US instead. This decision has suddenly put the entire project in jeopardy and has completely destroyed the chances of the UK to meet the European Union renewable energy targets that had been set.

Naturally Shell has come under heavy attack from politicians and environmentalists alike being called greedy and irresponsible and is seen to be a case of deserting a renewable energy project to protect its fossil fuel based interests. The fact that the decision to pull out of the project only days after announcing a first-quarter profit of £4 billion makes it even more unpalatable.

Hopefully, the departure of Shell from the London Array project will only cause minor delays to its progress with construction contract tenders expected to take place for the rest of 2008. If another investment partner can be found, the blowout won’t be too crippling. It would be a great shame if a renewable energy project with such tremendous upside were to be jeopardised due to one company’s greed.