BNEF founder: zero-support bid for offshore wind “risky and brave”

Michael Liebreich, founder of renewable energy research organisation Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), has called the zero-support bid in German offshore wind power auctions “a risky and brave move.” Successful bidders EnBW and Dong Energy were betting on a substantial capacity increase of the turbines and higher power prices, Liebreich said at a press briefing by think tanks Agora Energiewende and Agora Verkehrswende* in Berlin. Liebreich praised Germany’s fixed feed-in tariff policy for getting renewable energy generation off the ground but said the support scheme was “not economically efficient.” Reverse auctions were therefore necessary to “get cheap energy into the hands of users.” Financial support should eventually be dropped altogether to stabilise prices, and policy makers should instead “focus on shutting down dirty energy sources”, he said.

See the CLEW factsheet Germany ponders how to finance renewables expansion in the future for background.

*Like the Clean Energy Wire, Agora Energiewende and Agora Verkehrswende are projects funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Climate Foundation.