The bosses of 11 companies – Adwen, EDPR, Eneco, Eon, GE, Iberdrola, MHI Vestas, RWE, Siemens, Statoil and Vattenfall – signed the declaration ahead of a meeting of the EU Energy Council today.
“With the right build out and regulatory framework the industry is confident that it can achieve cost levels below €80/MWh for projects reaching final investment decision in 2025, including the costs of connecting to the grid,” the open letter stated. “This means offshore wind will be fully competitive with new conventional power generation within a decade.”
It warned the commitment would only be possible with “a stable, long-term market for renewables in Europe”, adding that “a strong pipeline of projects is needed to scale up offshore deployment and identify efficiencies in the supply chain”.
“Regional cooperation on offshore wind between European countries is of vital importance,” the letter said, “particularly in the northern seas”. It said closer regional cooperation, on issues including planning, financing and regulation, would “help to reduce costs and remove barriers to investment”.
Dong Energy said it was unable to sign the declaration because of rules regarding its initial public offering on the Copenhagen stock market scheduled for Thursday this week. However it said it “remains fully committed to continue to reduce the cost of electricity in line with the rest of the industry.”
Today’s meeting of the EU Energy Council has already seen the signing of an agreement between 10 member states from around the North Sea – the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, France, Denmark, Ireland and Belgium – to improve their cooperation on energy, and in particular offshore wind.
Wind Europe chief executive Giles Dickson said: “The agreement signed in Luxembourg today is a major step forward to fully realise the potential of offshore wind in Europe.”
He added: “It’s a good combination of top-down and bottom-up: top-down political commitment to take bottom-up practical action to reduce costs and facilitate the deployment of offshore wind.
Last week a report by REN21 found that the UK had the world’s largest installed offshore wind capacity at the end of 2015, and added the second largest volume of new offshore capacity over the preceding year.