According to former Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the offshore wind energy sector could help Europe get back on its feet after the current financial crisis. “If the sector understands their role I’m sure they could take the lead in bringing Europe out of the crisis, as the first mover” , he added in a recent interview with Wind Directions.
He even considered the sector’s biggest challenge in the next few years to be addressing its potential role as “the breaker in the markets going against the [financial] crisis.” As a Dane and a former politician, Rasmussen is no stranger to wind energy. Now, he has consolidated his familiarity with the sector as Chairman of Lindoe Offshore Renewables Centre (LORC), a Danish organisation that tests and demonstrates technologies for harvesting renewable energy offshore.
He believes strongly in the potential of the offshore wind energy sector – that it is “the most promising sector you could ever see” . However, it needs “take some jumps in technology”, he adds. “ We need to solve this reliability problem, this predictability problem and we need to bring down costs” , Rasmussen told Wind Directions. “We need to solve the grid problem and the [supply] chain problem. So there are a lot of new challenges at sea that need to be solved.” He also believes that costs need to come down.
As well as the industry, the EU also needs to take certain steps, believes Rasmussen. “I think number one, you must set yourself ambitious targets and stick to them. Number two, you must combine targets with concrete planning in your country and in the European Union. Number three is you have a documented implementation so industry can see the targets, this is planning, this is implementation. And then you need to have long-term financing which is especially important in these crisis years”, he says.
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Offshore WIND staff, February 22, 2012; Image: ewea