The government will not meet its goal of having around 30 offshore windparks (total capacity 6,000MW) in the North Sea by 2020 if it maintains current policy, reports Saturday’s Financieele Dagblad.

After 10 years of dithering on issues such as locations and subsidies, the Netherands has managed to build just two offshore windparks with combined capacity of 228MW, enough to supply electricity to 225,000 households, the paper says.
In 2011 there will be another three windparks at the most, leaving the country far behind its own target and those of neighbouring countries, says the paper.
Project developers have to negotiate with five ministries for licences and it is often unclear what the criteria are. This means investors are going abroad, Marcel Gerritsen, head of project financing at Rabobank, tells the paper.
The price of electricity in Europe is between 8.5 euro-cents and 11 euro-cents per kilowatt hour. Producing electricity from offshore turbines costs between 14 and 16 euro-cents, says the FD.