Delays in the first offshore concession projectsin China are most likely to cause postponing of the second bidding round, which was supposed to begin in the first half of this year.
The China Daily news portal writes that the second group of concession projects involves building of up to 2 GW of offshore wind energy in Jiangsu, Hebei, Shandong, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces.
In the first bidding round China awarded four contracts for construction of 1 GW wind capacity in offshore and inter-tidal projects. They were scheduled to be completed by 2014, but the construction has not even started yet.
Reasons for stagnation in this sector are, first of all, uncoordinated government bodies as well as various environmental issues. According to the companies involved in the industry, site changes and low feed-in tariffs were not very beneficial either.
Although China has set a goal to build 5 GW of offshore wind projects by 2015, delays in their realisation could likely result in not reaching it. This is further confirmed by the fact that the country installed no more than 258 MW of offshore wind power last year.
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Offshore WIND staff, June 1, 2012; Image: SIDRI