Swedish utility Vattenfall will not take part in a Dutch tender for a 700 megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm in the North Sea because of the uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic, the state-owned firm said on Thursday.
Vattenfall won the two most recent Dutch tenders for offshore wind farms in 2018 and 2019, which were the first granted without government subsidies on the energy produced.
"There is too much uncertainty right now to make this kind of investment decision", spokesman Robert Portier said.
"We have seen demand for energy decline, as many stores are closed and industrial production is down, and we don't know how long this will persist. We also don't know what the market will look like after all this is over," he said.
Portier said Vattenfall was going ahead with the construction of the other farms as planned, despite the coronavirus uncertainty.
The current tender, which runs until the end of this month, is the fourth of five being held by the Dutch in a push to create 3,500 MW of offshore wind power by 2023.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by David Clarke)
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