Polish wind industry ready to settle with government over offshore

POLAND: The Polish Offshore Wind Industry Association (PWIA) is ready to lower its expectations for offshore electricity support to 1.4-1.6 green certificates (GC) per megawatt hour from 1.8 GC proposed in 2012 as a result of falling technology costs.

PWIA is in talks with the Polish government on the future shape of renewable energy policy. The government still has not sent the draft renewable energy law, which was first presented in November 2011, to parliament.

The cabinet wants to revise the amount of support for renewable energy sources, which prime minister Donald Tusk criticised in April 2013 for being too high. "We are trying to achieve a compromise with the government," Maciej Stryjecki, PWIA's vice president told “uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç Offshore.

"Such a compromise solution is to calculate offshore support not for the period of first three years after the renewable energy law enters into force, but for the 2019-21 period, when construction of the first projects will start," he added.

According to Stryjecki, future developments in the offshore industry and placing some of the component production in Poland will allow for reducing GCs for offshore to somewhere between 1.4 and 1.6 per/ megawatt hour compared with 1.8 in the original 2011 draft RES law.