Europe’s wind industry needs to be strengthened. The EU has long agreed on that. However, the lack of agreement on what form such a strengthening should take became clear last Thursday when the Italian government announced a letter of intent with Chinese turbine manufacturer Ming Yang and developer Renexia.
The Chinese-Italian cooperation will lead to Chinese turbine production in Italy and form ”the basis for refining and strengthening the national industrial supply chain in the sector,” according to the Italian ministry of enterprise. This is hardly what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meant when she in the recent State of the Union stated that the wind turbines of the future must be built in Europe, says the pan-European industry organization, Wind Europe.
”It’s hard to square this MoU with the EU’s goal to maintain technology leadership for wind energy and strengthen the European wind energy supply chain,” the organization’s head of communications, Christoph Zipf, says in a response to EnergyWatch.
Likely EU investigation
The Danish industry association Green Power Denmark came to the same conclusion. On Friday, deputy director Jan Hylleberg wondered how the agreement was compatible with the series of EU legislation from the Net-Zero Industry Act to the Critical Raw Materials Act and the Foreign Subsidies Act that has been adopted and implemented recently.
Wind Europe also points to the latter aspect. The EU has already been involved in cases of possible illegal Chinese state subsidies on a number of wind turbine projects - including in Italy - and the organization’s communications manager believes the new agreement will create even more work for the task force.
”The EU Commission will probably want to examine the MoU in the context of the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation. Manufacturing investments fall under the scope of the regulation,” Zipf states.
Italy is not the first European country to sign memorandums of understanding on Chinese turbine production in the country. However, it is the first time an EU country has done so. In 2021, the then UK government signed a MoU with Ming Yang for production in Scotland, which came to light in April when the factory was included on a list of priority projects in an investment strategy.
However, it has also caused a political stir in the UK, and the agreement has yet to materialize.
(English edit by Kristoffer Grønbæk)
