A combination of inflating commodity costs and high interest rates has forced Denmark to postpone the start of work on the first of its planned “energy islands” for at least three years, Reuters reports.
The islands are to be offshore platforms that aggregate and transmit electricity generated by offshore wind turbines.
The aim eventually is to harvest 10GW of energy this way, equal to more than 60% of Denmark’s installed capacity.
Denmark’s energy minister Lars Aagaard yesterday said completion of the island would be put back from 2033 to 2036 at the earliest.
He said the project would cost about $30bn, including $7.5bn of public money. He declined to say how much that figure had increased from original estimates.
The news comes a year after Copenhagen announced a similar delay on the grounds of the rising cost of building and borrowing.
The island was originally planned as a joint Danish-Belgian project, but Aagaard said the rise in costs meant that was no longer possible.
“The prerequisite was that it could be established without subsidies and that there would be a positive gain for both Belgium and Denmark, and reality has developed in such a way that we can no longer see such a case,” he said.
He said the project could be redesigned to include power cables linked to Germany, which would mean Berlin would contribute to the costs of the scheme.
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