Warren Buffett in UK wind bid

Danny Fortson and Ben Marlow
AMERICAN investor Warren Buffett is considering making a £1 billion bet on Britain’s green energy revolution.
The government wants to make Britain the world’s largest offshore wind energy generator, but the plans require hundreds of miles of undersea cables to bring the electricity ashore to the national grid.
The network is expected to cost more than £12 billion and regulator Ofgem has launched an auction for the rights to build and maintain it.
Under the first phase, investors have been invited to bid on the connections for nine offshore farms that are built or planned, including the London Array off the Kent coast.
Mid-American Energy, owned by Buffett, is among those through to the qualification stage and is expected to bid on a 20-year deal to build and maintain the networks.
Others include National Grid, Scottish and Southern Energy, RWE, Norway’s Statkraft, Dong of Denmark, and infrastructure investors Macquarie, Transmission Capital and IFM.
The auction is expected to raise £1.15 billion. Information memoranda will be sent out the week after next by RBC Capital Markets, which is running the auction. Two larger auctions covering future networks will be launched after next summer’s sales.