The Impact of Two-Sided Contracts for Difference on Debt Sizing for Offshore Wind Farms
研究了双边差价合约如何通过稳定收入来增加海上风电场的债务规模，发现其比纯市场收入项目能提高15-27个百分点的债务比例，从而降低发电成本。
Two-sided Contracts for Difference (CfD) are a remuneration mechanism that stabilizes revenues and leads to better financing conditions for offshore wind farms. Despite the EU Commission’s efforts to make two-sided CfDs a mandatory remuneration scheme, many leading offshore wind markets in Europe still apply one-sided CfDs, which, combined with competitive auctions, often result in zero bids and merchant risk exposure. We contribute to the debate on the two-sided CfD effect on financing by quantifying their impact on debt size. Our approach combines a stochastic power price and wind-power feed-in model with cash flow liquidity management in a project financing setting. We show that offshore wind farms with two-sided CfDs experience less financial distress, increasing debt size between 15 and 27 percentage points compared to a project with merchant revenues. The leverage increase could save consumers between 12 and 19 EUR/MWh in electricity generation costs. This emphasizes the importance of continuing revenue stabilization measures to ensure a cost-effective mobilization of investments for financing Europe’s energy transition.