Speaking at an energy summit in Lisbon, environment and energy minister Maria da Graça Carvalho said the country would still embrace offshore wind development, but the planned auction would be smaller in scale. The tender had originally targeted three Atlantic coast sites with a potential combined capacity of up to 3.5GW.
Graça Carvalho is a member of the ruling centre-right Social Democratic Party, which came to power in March’s general election, ousting the centre-left Labour Party government. The previous administration had set a 2GW target for offshore wind capacity by the end of the decade.
“We want to keep up with this technology, but not on a cost-prohibitive scale… But not so small that it does not allow studying the effect on technological and industrial development in Portugal. We’re seeing great value,” Graça Carvalho said, according to Portuguese media reports.
Regarding the target capacity for offshore wind, she added: “It will be down. It was initially at 10GW, it went to 2GW, we are trying to lower it so that the value does not have so much impact on consumers' costs…”
The Portuguese government will announce details of the tender in July, Reuters reported.
Potential and pitfalls
Portugal’s Atlantic coastline hosts strong and consistent offshore winds. Offshore wind developer Corio, Danish developer Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), French floating specialist BW Ideol, German company BayWa and a pairing of SSE and Acciona have all expressed interest in pursuing offshore wind development in the country.
But despite its potential, various challenges remain in the path of major offshore wind development in Portugal, not least the necessity for floating offshore wind with the deep coastal waters available.
“[The] supply chain is a central barrier for a large expansion of floating offshore wind in Portugal. All of Portugal’s offshore wind potential requires floating foundations due to the deep Atlantic waters, and Europe does not have an established supply chain for floating foundations yet,” Alba Teodoro Pujol, a market research analyst at offshore wind intelligence company Aegir Insights, told “uåX˜äŠÊ˜·³Ç.
“Another key to achieving floating wind at scale will be the timely awarding of areas and adequate route to market with financial support, which is needed for the supply chain to emerge,” she said.
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