[CaptainCrunch]

https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/we...it/2-1-1197217

Raw material and logistics inflation coupled with downward price pressures from auctions have led to an unsustainable situation where wind OEMs are selling at a loss, with the sector unable to deliver Europe's planned tripling of wind capacity by 2030, industry leaders have warned.

“The state of the supply chain is ultimately unhealthy right now,” GE Renewable Energy chief executive for onshore wind, Sheri Hickok, told a panel at the WindEurope 2022 conference in Bilbao on Tuesday.
“It is unhealthy because we have an inflationary market that is beyond what anybody anticipated even last year. Steel is going up three times.”
Steel for offshore wind towers is currently being purchased at over $2,000 per tonne, Hickok gave as example, adding that the prices of copper, carbon and logistics had also soared.
“It is really ridiculous to think how we can sustain a supply chain in a growing industry with these kind of pressures.”
After hefty price hikes last year in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “things were higher but stabilising,” Hickok said, but added that with Russia’s war in Ukraine, the entire system had “unhinched” again in the past eight weeks, making it unsustainable at an unprecedented level of uncertainty.

Enercon’s new chief executive Jürgen Zeschky went even further, saying “all European onshore OEMs are in trouble.”
Over the past eight years, cost was the only driver for developments, with low levelised costs of energy and low turbine prices driving the whole business, he told WindEurope 2022.
“We have reached a low cost base, but at the price of outsourcing to low-cost countries,” Zeschky admitted.
“If you look at Europe and Germany, we are constantly losing jobs in industry by relocating to other places.”
But the situation has changed fundamentally, he pointed out.