Cost reduction is one of the biggest challenges facing the wind energy industry today, Dave Jones, head of renewable energy at Allianz Capital Partners, said at the European Wind Energy Agency’s conference in Barcelona in March. Jones added that reducing capital costs, particularly in offshore wind, must be an industry priority over the coming years.
Despite this need to cut costs, he stressed that policy changes in some EU Member States, where support for renewables is waning as a consequence of the financial crisis, might have the opposite effect - of pushing prices higher. Citing the example of Spain, where subsidies for renewables have been slashed in an effort to curb the budget deficit, Jones said that this had damaged investor confidence in the sector. Enercon Managing Director and EWEA 2014 conference chair Hans-Dieter Kettwig also referred to the dangerous regulatory instability for renewables in Spain and called on the Spanish government to restore a stable framework.
Speaking at the same conference, International Energy Agency Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven underlined the important role that the European Union could play in stabilizing the situation by providing a regulatory framework within which investors could feel secure. She said that the IEA supports an EU renewable energy target for 2030, as this would help reduce the policy risk, thereby shoring up investor confidence and bringing costs down.
However, she stressed that if the targets are EU-wide, and not underpinned by specific national targets, then there will need to be some sort of governance system in place, to ensure that countries contribute to the overall target. European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) President Andrew Garrad also called for renewable energy targets for 2030.
In light of recent concerns over the security of energy supplies to Europe, Gerrard also stressed the energy security benefits of a stronger wind energy sector, noting that the wind, unlike a gas pipeline, cannot be switched off for geopolitical reasons.
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