The government announced at a press conference that 13 applications for offshore wind power have been rejected, all of them in the Baltic Sea. One application, however, has been given the green light: the Poseidon wind farm off Stenungsund on the west coast.
The company Kontiki, co-owned by Vattenfall and Zephyr, can now move forward with plans to build 81 wind turbines there, with a maximum height of 340 meters. They will be built on floating foundations.
"Liseberg at sea"
Locally, there has been strong opposition to offshore wind power, not least from The Moderate Party.
Mats Abrahamsson, former Moderate chairman of the municipal board in Sotenäs, has said that the Bohus coast risks looking like a "Liseberg at sea".
The Moderate Party in Uddevalla called 260-meter-high wind turbines "monsters" three years ago and warned of a "totally destroyed Bohuslän" if The Green Party were to proceed with wind power plans.
"Long-awaited production"
The Minister for Climate and Environment, however, does not seem worried about how the government's decision will be received locally.
If you look at Poseidon, both the location and the design, I think it can be interesting even for those who may be critical of the impact on the local environment, since Poseidon has a floating foundation, and this is the first offshore wind farm to be approved with such a foundation in Sweden, says Pourmokhtari.
This means that the wind turbines can be placed further out and in deeper waters, she continues.
So I hope that local politicians, not least in the municipalities around Stenungsund and Lysekil, can be positive about us now getting long-awaited production for western Sweden and for the business community.
