Vestas to Shut U.K.'s Only Wind Turbine Manufacturing Plant

The U.K. government's plans for a "green jobs" revolution is about to be struck a serious blow as the country's only large wind turbine manufacturing plant is scheduled to close next week, entailing the loss of almost 600 jobs.

According to Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, TX), Danish company Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Randers, Denmark), one of the world's largest turbine makers, announced earlier this year that the Vestas Wind Systems plant would close on July 31. The company claimed that demand for wind turbines in northern Europe was decreasing and that U.K. planning delays and local opposition made building windfarms in the country too slow.

Throughout last week, the Vestas plant in Newport has been occupied by workers staging an illegal sit-in with environmental campaigners to save their jobs at what is one of the most important renewable energy manufacturers in the U.K. The impending closure of the company's plant in Newport on the Isle of Wight will seriously impact the credibility of the government's recent Renewable Energy Strategy and claims that it will deliver 400,000 "green jobs" in the renewable energy sector. So far, the government has declined to intercede and help save the plant, which makes wind turbine blades.

Earlier this year, Ditlev Engel, Chief Executive of Vestas, said that the U.K. was one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to build windfarms. Blaming a tortuous planning system, he claimed that while government politicians are driving the renewable energy revolution, local councils seem determined to block windfarms at every turn. These are the main reasons why Vestas argued that the U.K. plant would have to close.

Although Vestas will not manufacture turbines in the U.K., it is still a supplier to some large U.K. windfarm developments. At the end of last year, Vestas secured contracts from Vattenfall Wind Power (Stockholm, Sweden) to supply 100 V90-3MW wind turbines for installation at the $1.5 billion Thanet offshore windfarm, 11 kilometres east of Margate, Kent, in southeast England.

In contrast to its withdrawal from the U.K. wind energy manufacturing sector, Vestas is betting big on the U.S wind market. Last month, the company pledged $1 billion in investment for the U.S. renewable energy market over the next two years, in the hope that it will offset falling European turbine sales. Vestas growth forecast for 2009 has already been halved from 40 percent to 20 percent. Washington has earmarked about $70 billion for clean energy projects, alongside $20 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy projects.

Vestas already supplies its 121 and 122 wind turbine-generators, which both have generating capacities of 1.65 MW, to a couple of large Wisconsin-based windfarms owned by Alliant Energy (Madison, WI), each with a total output of about 200 MW.