Vestas sees offshore wind funding gap

Offshore Wind Project Finance enables developers to fund high-CAPEX turbines via banks, export credit agencies like EKF, and investors, as utilities' balance sheets strain; Vestas facilitates financing links while Siemens leads Northern Europe installations.

The huge investment required to meet offshore wind development targets cannot be funded by large utilities alone, a project finance manager for Vestas, the world's top supplier of wind turbines, said.

"Even strong utilities cannot fund investment in offshore wind only with their balance sheet, as funding issues persist, this is not sustainable," Erik Sejersen told the Projects & Infrastructure International conference in Brussels.

Only a handful of projects have been funded on a project finance basis as the high costs and technical challenges of installing and maintaining offshore wind turbines has discouraged many banks from lending to projects, though some big lenders remain committed to green power today.

But Sejersen said that project finance was necessary for small offshore wind developers to see projects through as well as for financial investors to leverage, as European power markets increasingly key on offshore wind today. Unlike competitors Siemens and General Electric, Vestas does not provide vendor financing.

"We do not bring funding to the table but we can facilitate the process through our relationships with banks and export credit agencies such as Denmark's EKF," said Sejersen.

Vestas has installed more than 1,000 MW of capacity in offshore projects in the Northern Europe, where the vast majority of Europe's offshore wind projects are being developed amid rapid growth across the region today.

Sejersen said the project finance market for wind installations was starting to pick up, with the offshore wind industry slowly improving, echoing the views of Siemens, which says it is No. 1 in the market when it comes to offshore wind turbines.

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