World's first green energy island sails into cost storm

Vlissingen, Netherlands: At a shipyard on the North Sea, workers in luminiscent vests are building dozens of massive, hollow concrete boulders, each t...

Vlissingen, Netherlands: At a shipyard on the North Sea, workers in luminiscent vests are building dozens of massive, hollow concrete boulders, each the size of an apartment block.

These are to be floated out to sea and sunk to become the foundations of a giant Belgian green energy development -- a world first -- which is itself, however, in choppy waters amid surging costs.

Named after Belgium's Princess Elisabeth, the "energy island" was launched in 2021 to support a huge expansion in wind energy production that would drastically reduce the country's dependence on planet-warming fossil fuels.

But supply chain snags have made costs more than triple to more than seven billion euros ($7.56 billion), according to some estimates, sparking calls for construction to be stopped at a time of growing political pushback against ambitious green targets across Europe.

"This cost increase is a huge worry," Belgium's energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten told AFP.