Fra ABN Amro:
It’s getting windier – Recent studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, wind speeds across the global have been picking up over the past decade. The traditional school of thought was that urbanisation and vegetation growth negatively affect windspeed over land, but a research paper led by a team at Princeton University calculated that a typical wind turbine would have produced roughly 17% more energy in 2017 compared to 2010, based on global average wind speeds.
The researchers ascribe this trend to large-scale ocean-atmospheric oscillations over the past years caused by uneven heating of the earth’s surface. While the link to ocean wind speed was well-known, the study showed the that these oscillations also tend to positively affect land wind speed.
These findings could be a boon for the windfarm value chain, especially since the researchers expect a further rise in windspeeds from these effects. Using climate indices, the researchers predict an increase in wind generation on a typical turbine of up to 37% by 2024.
Perhaps this might explain the strong demand we have seen in the hybrid debt issued today by Danish utility company Orsted, which managed to price a green perpetual bond which cannot be called before 2027 at a yield of 2%. This will become the richest hybrid in this maturity space, looking at a basket of hybrids by well-known utility issuers such as Enel and Vattenfall. These peers also have significant ambitions to expand in wind energy.
