Wind Watch: Offshore wind-energy parks in Europe lose appeal, Banker says

Offshore wind-energy installations in Northern Europe have lost appeal among financiers because of increased costs and difficulties in building and running equipment miles at sea, a German banker said.

Many lenders have stopped providing credit for installations that are anchored to the ocean floor, said Thiess Harder-Heun, a director at Deutsche Kreditbank AG, which has financed construction of about 700 wind turbines over the past decade.

Plans to install hundreds of windmills in water about 20 meters (66 feet) deep off the German and U.K. coasts were made before developers gained much expertise in fielding special ships, cranes and equipment that can resist the impact of strong winds and corrosion by salt.

The Reference Frame: Vaclav Klaus: Europe, environmentalism and the current economic crisis: a contrarian view

I see another big problem in environmentalism and in its currently most aggressive form – global warming alarmism. This ideology has gradually turned into the most efficient vehicle for advocating extensive government intervention into all fields of life and for suppressing human freedom and economic prosperity.

I am frustrated that this ideology has not been sufficiently challenged both inside and outside of climatology. We keep hearing one-sided propaganda, but do not hear serious counter-arguments. It is also evident that the debate should go beyond climatology. We should not accept dividing human beings into climatologists and the uninformed, and rather naive rest of us. The global warming debate is a complex issue and climatology is only a part of it.