New Shell offshore wind farm to power 1 mil. homes

Shell is teaming up with energy company Eneco and offshore company Van Oord to build a massive wind farm off the shore of Borssele in Zeeland .The wind farm will consist of about 100 windmills and will generate enough energy to supply a million households, AD reports.

Minister Henk Kamp of Economic Affairs announced that the Dutch trio won the tender for the offshore wind farm on Monday night. It will be built over the coming years. Shell lost a previous tender for another wind farm to the Danish Dong, which was able to tender on the then lowest offshore wind energy price in the world at 7.27 cents per kilowatt hour. Shell, Eneco and Van Oord managed to come in at 5.45 cents per kilowatt hour on this tender.

The low price is good news for tax payers, who will pay less on their energy bills to make subsidies for renewable energy possible. It is also good news for Kamp's budget. The Minister initially estimated that 18 billion euros in subsidies will be necessary. Now he thinks that "with the necessary blows" he can get away with 6 billion, according to the newspaper.

"If the development of the price of electricity continues as expected, then after 7.5 years of construction we have no need for funding for electricity through offshore wind. The aim of the government to have the price of renewable energy compete with fossil energy is thus in sight.