A consortium led by Anglo-Dutch oil and gas giant Shell will build the second Dutch mega wind farm project in the North Sea, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs announced on Monday.
Together with Shell Dutch energy company Eneco, Dutch offshore company Van Oord and DGE, a subsidiary of Japan's Mitsubishi are to construct and exploit about 100 wind turbines on two sites of the so-called wind farms Borssele.
The wind farms will be built at a distance of 22 kilometers off the coast of the province of Zeeland.
In total, the ministry had received 26 bids in the tender to secure permits and a subsidy.
The party that had the best plan and offered the lowest costs received both a 15-year subsidy and 30-year permit by the Dutch government to build and operate the wind farm and then decommission it.
This tender was about the second Borssele offshore wind farm in the Dutch North Sea. It is expected to be constructed and operated with a subsidy of just 0.3 billion euros (0.32 billion US dollars), which is far below an anticipated subsidy of 5 billion euros.
"If the electricity price develops as we expect, in 7.5 years' time subsidies will no longer be required for the production of electricity from offshore wind farms," Dutch Minister Henk Kamp of Economic Affairs stated in a press release. "That brings the government's aim for renewables to compete with fossil fuels without subsidy within reach."
In July this year the Danish company Dong Energy won the competition to build on the first two sites of the wind farm project Borssele.
The latest tender involved the second of five planned major Dutch wind farm projects, all expected to be operational by 2023.
"The Netherlands is a front runner in the development of offshore wind energy, creating many opportunities for the Dutch industry," Kamp added. "With these winners this becomes even more clearly visible."
"The realization of the offshore wind farms is a boost for the industry," Kamp also said. "We expect that by 2020 around 10,000 jobs will be created by these projects. Dutch industry is involved in the construction of almost all offshore wind farms in Europe."
In the forthcoming years, the same tender procedure will follow for another Borssele site and two other wind farm parks off the coast of the provinces of South and North Holland. Each wind farm has a capacity of 700 MW and will produce electricity for a million households.
