Four EU countries – Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands – jointly announced yesterday that they have set an offshore wind energy target of at least 65 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and then plan to more than double that combined total to 150. GW in 2050 .
For perspective, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, there was 35.3 GW of global offshore wind capacity in September 2021.
Huge offshore wind gust in Europe
That massive offshore wind gust through Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands will provide at least half the capacity the EU needs to reach net zero by 2050.
The EU has set an overall target of generating 300 GW of offshore wind by 2050, which is more than the current 16 GW installed.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the four EU countries that will build the offshore wind farms off their North Sea coasts “want to quadruple our total offshore wind capacity by 2030 and tenfold by 2050.”
The goal is to provide 230 million households in the EU with clean energy from offshore wind and also to provide clean energy to make green hydrogen and green fuels for heavy industry and transport.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said:
The North Sea is the place where we can produce electricity on a large scale with the offshore wind farms, in the large quantities that we need — and we already can. [that] today in a way that it is economic.
Stop Russian fossil fuels, switch to clean energy
The announcement from Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands followed the unveiling earlier today of the RePowerEU Plan, the “European Commission’s response to the hardships and global energy market disruption caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine”.
The EU imported about 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil from Russia last year, and is working to end the EU’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels and fight climate change “well before 2030”. . An EU ban on Russian coal is expected to come into effect in August.
The RePowerEU plan is a three-pronged plan: accelerating clean energy adoption, boosting energy conservation efforts, and increasing imports of non-Russian natural gas.
Reuters notes about natural gas imports:
The Commission said some investments in fossil fuel infrastructure would be needed – €10 billion for a dozen gas and liquefied natural gas projects, and up to €2 billion for oil, targeting landlocked Central and Eastern European countries that have no access to non-Russian supplies.
The European Commission said new gas infrastructure could transport green hydrogen in the future.
The plan will cost up to €300 billion ($316 billion) and will require an additional investment of €210 billion between now and 2027 by the public and private sectors at national, cross-border and EU levels. It states that “reducing Russian fossil fuel imports could also save us nearly $100 billion a year.”
The European Commission has also proposed a higher legally binding target of getting 45% of EU energy from clean energy sources by 2030 – an increase from its current proposal of 40%.
Clean energy initiatives in the RePowerEU plan include:
- Double solar capacity by 2025 and install 600 GW of solar power by 2030
- A Solar Rooftop Initiative with a phased legal obligation to install solar panels on new public and commercial buildings and new residential buildings
- Doubling the deployment rate of heat pumps and measures to integrate geothermal and solar thermal energy into modernized district and municipal heating systems
- Shortening and simplifying permits for clean energy projects such as wind and solar
- Set a target of 10 million tons of domestic renewable hydrogen production and 10 million tons of imports by 2030 to replace natural gas, coal and oil in hard-to-decarbonise industries and transportation sectors
Read more: Renewable energy will set another global record in 2022, despite supply chain problems – IEA
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