Financing Issues With Offshore Wind Projects in the UK

This piece discusses the future prospects for financing of offshore wind projects in the UK. The article notes that most of the UK's early offshore wind projects were financed by developers and did not attract much interest by banks because of their small size. However, as the article reports, financing will be needed for the offshore wind industry to expand.

Two potential issues identified by the article which pose potential impediments to financing are project size and the availability of "renewable obligation certificates" (ROC's) To make financing worthwhile, projects must be at least 100 MW in size - and projects in the second round of development may satisfy the size criteria. But financers also remain uncertain as to whether the government will continue to make ROCs (which generate additional income for green energy projects) available and this is also a factor which banks take into account in considering to finance offshore wind.