Contractual Aspects of (Offshore) Wind Farm Construction/Erection and Operation Maintenance (OM) Contracts: the Critical Success Factors – with a focus on the impact of auctions on project development

摘要

Within the legal framework of the European Union (EU) Germany has adopted its own targets in order to achieve the energy transition: 1. the percentage of “renewables” (energy respectively electricity generated from renewable sources; in the following “Renewables”) from the total gross electrical energy consumption shall be 40-45 % by 2025 and 55-60% in 2035 before achieving at least 80% in 2050; 2. the percentage of Renewables from the total gross final energy consumption shall be 18% in 2020, 30% in 2030, 45% in 2040 and 60% in 2050i. As main legal instrument to monitor and achieve these targets Germany has introduced the Renewables Act (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, in the following “EEG”) which became effective in 2000. Since then, it has been modified or even revised several times in order to take into account the technological and economic developments and various objectives, being adjusted during the period from 2000 until now. At the very beginning the German legislator considered it necessary - in order to promote Renewables - to grant to investors willing to own/ operate Renewables power plants 1. a fixed purchase price (fixed promotion rates/ “Einspeisevergütung”) for the generated electricity 2. over a given period, which was more or less equivalent to the life cycle of a Renewables plant, 3. combined with an obligation of the grid owner not only to purchase the generated electricity, but to offtake it in priority. At the end it is/ has always been the end-user/ consumer of electricity, who pays/ paid the bill. The grid operators having to offtake the electricity at the purchase price fixed by the law can – to put it in a simple way - pass on the difference between that price and the much lower Electricity (selling) prices at the spot market of the German electricity exchange EEX onto the consumer by way of the so- called “EEG-Umlage” (apportionment the costs) according to the EEG Act. The development of the Renewables has been considerable. Whereas in 2000 only 6% of the total gross electrical energy consumption came from Renewables, the share today (2016) amounts to nearly 32 %. The share of the power generated by wind in the total power generation from renewable sources in Germany (2016) amounts to around 40%.