Bravo to NPI
Some good news in offshore wind
After months of negative headlines driven by whining utilities that seemingly don’t know how to do offshore wind anymore, two bits of good news came this week, both associated with Northland Power, the Canadian developer that has become a serious force in offshore wind over the past 10 years: the signing of major financings for projects in Poland '(1.1 GW) and Taiwan (1.05 GW) for close to EUR 5 billion each.
Both had tariff regimes set a while back, and both are in challenging countries (Poland because it is a new market, and Taiwan because some earlier projects have face construction difficulties recently, and the wider tense geopolitical context), and obviously inflation and increasing interest rates apply there too, but apparently that did not prevent NPI and their partners from finding solutions to get the projects done.
I was directly involved in NPI’s first foray into offshore wind (Gemini in the Netherlands in 2013-14), and worked with them many times since then (and my former company, Green Giraffe, advised them on their Polish financing), so I’m obviously biased towards them, but as they are not a client now, I can say it even more sincerely: bravo - you are showing the way!
And I would also like to note the role of Ian Hatton in Hai Long, the Taiwan project - he was the original developer of the project, via his company Enterprize Energy (full disclosure, I am on the board of that company), bringing the work he had done in the US, trying to develop an hurricane-proof foundation concept for the Gulf of Mexico (a project ahead of its time, still) to Taiwan, seeing before most why offshore wind would make sense in that country, as clean, less import-dependent, large-scale generation source. He took the project forward, brought NPI on board (and I believe I can take the credit for introducing them to each other) and supported the development work up to financial close.
The industry needs more of parties like NPI and Enterprize, that get things done, and less of the mindless noise we are getting these days. I salute them.