Insights | March 24, 2022

Roschier at the Wind and Renewables Exhibition during Vaasa EnergyWeek

At the annual EnergyWeek, an international group of energy enthusiasts got together to share information, hear about the latest news and projects, extend their networks and do business. Roschier was an exhibitor on the Wind Power & Renewables day of EnergyWeek 2022, and the event was attended by Toni Siimes, Stefan Wikman, Tuure Leponiemi and Elisa Panula.

Roschier Partner Toni Siimes held the first exhibitor’s presentation of the day, which concerned wind power transactions from a lawyer’s perspective. Toni emphasized the importance of focused project management, which is characterized inter alia by separate workstreams for legal, technical and commercial matters, the extensive use of template documents, and a continued understanding of the project as a whole.

The presentation was rooted in Roschier’s experiences from various wind power projects, and focused on lessons learned relating to e.g. different lender’s requirements in the project agreement negotiation process.

Our key takeaway

Offshore wind power was widely discussed during the day’s seminars and more spontaneously during various meetings at the exhibition. At the time of writing, only one offshore wind park is operating in Finland, and offshore wind is more expensive than onshore wind.

However, we consider it important to ensure that a few offshore wind power projects will progress, not least because such projects could contribute to building an offshore wind ecosystem in Finland, and create precedents in permit-related issues, grid access subsidies and other arrangements as well as offshore wind power real estate tax matters.

Decisions in these matters would remove a substantial proportion of the legal uncertainty relating to offshore wind projects, consequently facilitating development and investment in further offshore wind power projects. While most of the new wind power projects in the foreseeable future will still be onshore, it would be shortsighted to disregard the opportunity that offshore wind could contribute to the Finnish energy market.