The UK government has announced over £1bn ($1.27bn) in support of the upcoming renewables tender, with the largest slice of the cake – some £800m or around $1bn – going to offshore wind. Developers are being offered £800 million for the upcoming contract for difference (CfD) Allocation Round 6 (AR6) to prevent the previous round’s disaster of zero bids for offshore wind firms. The cash should go to offshore wind projects delivered from 2027. The rest of the money will go to schemes including solar farms, floating offshore wind, and wave power. The government’s cash injection should secure a fixed price offshore wind developers can charge for each megawatt-hour (MWh) of power they generate. Before this, the UK raised the ceiling for what companies could charge per MWh due to inflation raising the price of renewable energy which was for years getting cheaper. Namely, the former maximum strike prices of £44 per MWh for offshore wind with fixed-bottom foundations and £116 per MWh for floating offshore wind in the previous round attracted no investors. Now, the maximum price available for offshore wind with fixed-bottom foundations was raised by 66% – from £44 per MWh to £73 per MWh. The maximum price for floating offshore wind projects went up 52% – from £116 per MWh to £176 per MWh. The cost of the support will come out of energy bills rather than from taxation but if the electricity price rises above the fixed price, the wind power will be charged with money being returned to consumers. Although this is seen as a positive move by the government, some experts still believe that the UK faces a lot of issues if it were to meet its 2030 target for 50GW of offshore wind and that it would most likely take even more money and government subsidies for that to happen. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1_95_0_1_2'); }); TagsOffshore Wind United Kingdom