Forums des énergies : société, écologie et technologies propres

Allemagne : (Bloomberg) mercredi 3 juin

As much as 100 billion euros ($143 billion) in planned investments in German offshore wind farms are at risk as developers struggle to get funding, jeopardizing the deepest emissions cuts in the European Union.

Bochum’s municipal utility expects its first wind park to be delayed by up to two years, Managing Director Bernd Wilmert said. HEAG Suedhessische Energie AG, a regional energy supplier known as HSE, had to go to twice as many banks as it would have needed last year to finance a 1.3 billion-euro North Sea wind farm, Chief Executive Officer Albert Filbert said.

Germany wants to add up to 25 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030, according to the Environment Ministry, enough to power about 25 million homes a year, at a cost of as much as 4 million euros per megawatt of installed capacity. Banks are only lending about half the 100 million euros they handed out in 2008. That will make it harder for the country to curb carbon-dioxide emissions by 40 percent in real terms by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, as nuclear plants are phased out.

“The appetite per project has fallen,” said Thomas Rueschen, who arranges funding for wind farms and solar power plants as global head of Asset and Finance Leasing at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt. “Finding creditors for the financing has become a bigger challenge.”

Germany was overtaken by the U.S. as the world’s leading wind power generator last year, according to the Washington- based researcher WorldWatch Institute. It had 23.903 gigawatts of wind power capacity in 2008, less than the U.S. which had 25.170 gigawatts.

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