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  • Wind energy falls to record €60 per mWh

    Further evidence of the growing competitiveness of renewable energy has come in the form of a new record-breaking price which has secured a contract for Sweden’s largest energy company, Vattenfall.

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    Vattenfall has won the contract to build two wind farms in the Danish North Sea with a bid to sell the energy from the farms for €60 per megawatt hour (mWh). That beats the record of €72.70 set just two months ago by the Danish firm Dong Energy for two wind farms off the Netherlands coast, while 10 months ago Vattenfall won a Danish wind farm contract at a then-record-low cost of €103 per MWh.

    The Vattenfall scheme in Denmark owes its low price partly to the fact that the site will be very close to the coast, which means lower costs (Vattenfall’s website uses the term ‘near-shore’, rather than ‘off-shore’ or ‘on-shore’, because it is so close to land), but also to general advances in wind energy which are happening more quickly than expected.

    The announcement of the €60 per mWh project came just three days before the British government announced it was confirming a project to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in the south-west of England. Hinkley Point, which will be built by the French energy company EDF with finance from China, is guaranteed a price of €108 per mWh.