Offshore wind: Europe relaunches with first common hub
Offshore wind is struggling in the United States following the total ban imposed by Trump, but Europe is making a comeback. The European Commission has granted €645 million in funding to the Bornholm Energy Island project, which aims to create the first joint offshore wind hub for Germany and Denmark. The funds are provided through the Connecting Europe Facility, and the initiative is being jointly implemented by the two grid operators, Germany's 50Hertz and Denmark's Energinet, with Project of European Interest status. "As the world's first hybrid DC interconnector, the Bornholm Energy Island project represents a new era of energy cooperation in Europe," according to the Commission. By pooling offshore generation and connecting national grids, "wind energy will no longer be exploited exclusively by individual countries."
The idea is to connect three gigawatts of new offshore wind farms (still to be put out to tender) into a single energy hub, located on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, with the option to add an additional 800 megawatts of wind power to the hub and extend the system to other Nordic countries. The project is part of an agreement, already signed in 2020 between Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark, which also includes an artificial energy island in the North Sea, yet to be built, to create another joint hub with the Netherlands, with 3 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, to be increased over time to 10 gigawatts. Feasibility studies are underway for this artificial island, but the project is more complex than the one recently funded.
The energy generated in the farms south of Bornholm will power at least 3 million households by 2030 and will be delivered to Denmark and Germany via nearly 400 kilometers of high-voltage DC cables, mostly undersea, to ensure the integration of this renewable energy into both countries' electricity grids. Procurement has already begun, with Siemens securing a €1 million order for the delivery of four converter systems, while Denmark's NKT will supply €650 million worth of high-voltage DC cables to connect Bornholm to Denmark. On Bornholm alone, approximately 900 new jobs are expected to be created and 2,000 new residents will join the current 39,000.
The goal is therefore to create a circuit by 2030 capable of easily and rapidly connecting generation and consumption, even if separated by sea, using the island of Bornholm as a keystone. The aim is to demonstrate how offshore wind can be exploited on a large scale, with the potential for similar projects elsewhere in Europe. In this way, the Commission hopes to accelerate the energy transition: with an installed offshore wind capacity of 21 gigawatts at the end of 2024, the European Union is behind schedule with respect to its new targets of 111 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 317 gigawatts by 2050, and it wants to encourage the European industry to take action.
Of the 27 member states, only 15 have currently set binding targets for offshore wind by 2030, which total 99 gigawatts, according to a very recent report by Ember. Over half of these targets are met by Germany (30 gigawatts) and the Netherlands (21 gigawatts). Denmark has a target of 12.9 gigawatts by 2030, France 4 gigawatts, and Italy 2.1 gigawatts. Poland, emerging as a new European powerhouse in the sector, has just installed its first offshore turbines in the 1.2 gigawatt Baltic Power project and has a target of 5.9 gigawatts by 2030.
The United Kingdom, already Europe's leader in offshore wind with 15 gigawatts of operational capacity, is also the country with the highest targets, set at 43-50 gigawatts by 2030. Globally, the clear leader is China, with 41 gigawatts of turbines installed offshore, but Beijing has no national targets for 2030, only provincial ones, totaling 64 gigawatts, according to the Ember report. In its 15th five-year plan, however, it has committed to installing at least 15 gigawatts of offshore wind annually from 2026 to 2030, thus at least another 75 gigawatts.
The International Energy Agency, usually very conservative, estimates a more than doubling of new offshore wind installations in the 2025-30 forecast period, to 140 gigawatts, compared to 60 gigawatts installed in the previous period, 2019-2024. "The annual offshore wind market will grow from 9.2 gigawatts in 2024 to over 37 gigawatts by 2030, with China accounting for nearly 50% of this increase. In Europe, the annual market is projected to reach 14.6 gigawatts by 2030," the IEA states in its latest report. Already today, 50.3% of global offshore wind capacity (83.2 gigawatts) is Chinese, 45.2% is European, 0.2% is North American, and the remainder is Asian. Last year, China added 4 gigawatts of offshore wind and Europe 2.7 gigawatts.
Headwinds from the United States have created significant turbulence in Europe as well, but the Global Wind Energy Council still forecasts an annual growth rate of 28% through 2029 and 15% thereafter through 2034. In terms of capacity, the estimate is for a market of 50 gigawatts per year by 2033. At this rate, offshore turbines will also begin to appear in the Mediterranean, where they are currently completely absent.
News and insights on political, economic, and financial events.
Sign up
ilsole24ore
