International governments postpone renewable project auctions due to COVID-19

The Irish government has postponed the opening round of the country’s first ever renewables auction, the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS), pushing the deadline date for qualification back by a month. The Energy Department announced that due to the ‘unprecedented challenges’ caused by the pandemic, the entry window will now run until 30 April instead of 2 April, and a revised auction schedule will be announced in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Portugal has postponed auctions for 700 MW of new solar power capacity. Initially scheduled to begin in April, the auction is now planned to launch by June if the spread of the virus slows sufficiently. The new solar capacity would help Portugal to meet its ambition of having 7000 MW of renewable energy by 2030. 

Delays have been less severe in other countries, such as France, where a planned auction for 1 GW of solar power has been split. One-third of the auction will go ahead as planned on 3 July and two-thirds has been postponed until 3 November. This is to give the French solar industry some ‘positive tension,’ said Xavier Daval, chair of French PV body SER-SOLER. ‘Our industry needs to keep something on our plate, deadlines to act on. It is a positive way to keep some pressure on,’ he continued.

In Germany, future rounds of bidding in planned renewable auctions – representing 2.9 GW of onshore wind capacity and 1.4 GW of solar power up for grabs before the end of the year – will continue as planned. However, the winners of auctions will not be revealed publicly until the effects of coronavirus are less severe. Project deadlines will also not come into effect until things return to normal.

Further afield, Brazil’s energy regulator has indefinitely postponed power auctions scheduled to be held in 2020. Energy regulator Aneel has placed these plans on hold rather than cancelling them, stating that it expects to ‘[resume] economic activity once the public health situation is normalised’.

Elsewhere, the Indian government has granted leniency to renewables projects experiencing problems due to coronavirus. The country’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) will treat disruptions, such as broken supply chains from China, as force majeure events.  

Whilst the lack of ongoing auctions globally will result in a downturn in deployment in the first half of the year, there is hope for renewables projects further down the line, as governments opt to postpone rather than cancel the auctions.