One of the biggest players within Danish offshore wind now aligns with the long string of critic voices railing Danish policymakers for shutting down the open-door ordinance, reports Danish business daily Børsen.

Sweden’s state-owned utility Vattenfall is amazed at the decision to scuttle the ordinance, which the Swedish company had two pending applications filing under.

”We normally think of Denmark as a place that excels in terms of trust between authorities and developers. But not in this case,” says Catrin Jung, head of Vattenfall offshore wind business unit, to Børsen.

She calls it a complete waste of time, should the Danish government decide to terminate the ordinance without further warning. Danish energy minister Lars Aagaard says that companies were well aware of the legal risk from the start.

Widespread critique

On Wednesday last week, it was announced that a mere 3 out the 27 pending projects under the open-door scheme would survive a new offshore wind plan.

The three projects surviving the plan are the Ørsted and CIP project Vikinge Banke, Wind Estate’s Paludan Flak and Kadet Banke, making up a total of 2.4GW.

The open-door projects came to a halt back in February, as the ordinance could be in violation of EU subsidy regulations. The ordinance included 33 projects of a combined 23GW capacity, back then.

Since then, projects Nordre Flint, Lillebælt Syd, Jammerland Bugt, Omø Syd as well as Aflandshage and Frederikshavn Havvindmølleprojekt have been green-lit to resume operations.

The termination of the ordinance has been met with severe critique across the industry.

”We believe that the government has made a very unfortunate decision on the open-door projects,” said European Energy Head of Offshore Wind Andreas Karhula Lauridsen in a comment, adding:

”The decision is dead against the open-door ordinance which was revised last year with unilateral support.”

Green Power Denmark deemed it a major breach of trust.

”It is unheard of. The government pulls the brakes on a green business venture and betrays the trust of the companies needed to invest in the future green transition.”

Hydrogen Denmark deemed the process unworthy. 

Sneaky

The next day, energy spokesperson for the Danish Conservative Party Mona Juul said that is was a ”sneaky” way of terminating the open-door scheme.

She had been sitting in on a meeting on the new offshore plan when she suddenly received an e-mail.

The e-mail had been sent out to all energy spokespersons and informed that the suspended open-door projects would be tanked as part of the new offshore plan.

”It is a sneaky and improper way of doing politics. I repeatedly asked if the government planned on connecting the open-door negotiations to the offshore plan, which I was told it wouldn’t,” says Mona Juul.

”On my way out of a bilateral meeting on Tuesday night, I was presented with six brisk sentences on the open-door scheme in the offshore plan text of agreement. When I then said that I was unwilling to accept the provision, I was told that it is a mere statement of fact. I am unable to make any changes to the text which is suddenly linked to the offshore plan, looking like something that was unilaterally signed off on among the contracting parties. And that is certainly not the case.”