Danish Government Says Wind Power Became Too Expensive

The Danish government said on Friday it wanted to scrap plans to build five offshore wind farms as their output would become too expensive for consumers.

 

The government estimates it would cost consumers 70 billion Danish crowns ($10.63 billion) to buy electricity from the plants with a total combined capacity of 350-megawatts.

 

"Since 2012 when we reached the political agreement, the cost of our renewable policy has increased dramatically," said Lars Christian Lilleholt, energy minister in Denmark's Liberal party government.

 

"We can't accept this, as the private sector and households are paying far too much. Denmark's renewable policy has turned out to be too expensive," he said.

 

Denmark produced more than 40 percent of its electricity from wind power last year, a world record, and it has a goal of increasing this share to 50 percent by 2020.

 

Subsidies for wind power producers had to increase as power prices fell sharply since 2012, and producers had to get more money to make production profitable.

 

Nordic average power prices fell to 21 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh) in 2015, down from 31 euros/MWh on 2012.


($1 = 6.5876 Danish crowns)

(Reporting by Erik Matzen; Editing by Jon Boyle)