In a disappointing u-turn Shell have pulled out of a prestigious wind power project in the United Kingdom, placing the future of this project in jeopardy.

This flagship wind generation project was to produce 1,000 megawatts of power – enough to power a quarter of London’s residential properties.

Shell has so far not given a detailed explanation for its sudden decision. In an article carried by the FT.com the costs of the project appear to have escalated, well there’s a surprise, “from £1bn in 2003 to at least £2bn to £2.5bn as a global rush to wind energy has driven up the price of turbine components”

After the fanfare and the hype that came with this project this really is a blow. Shell’s partners, Eon and Denmark’s Dong Energy now need to find a new partner who are prepared to buy Shells share. Our take on this would be if it doesn’t work for Shell then it doesn’t work for anyone else. Time to prepare for the slow death of this project.

Dong has said it was “looking into all options”. It begs the question of what options?

This blow to wind energy once again puts pressure on the United Kingdom to push on with other forms of energy generation including the nuclear option. However, as we have stated before it looks to us that the United Kingdom will fall into an energy gap where they have insufficient nuclear or conventional power plants in place to meet their energy needs. Although this is a blow to wind energy it does assist the argument for going nuclear which is good news for uranium bugs, and how we need some good news at the moment.

Have a good one.

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