The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) has claimed in its review of the existing offshore grid capacity that a €400bn ($435.8bn) investment in offshore wind grids is required to meet European plans.
The report, named Offshore Network Development Plans: European Offshore Network Transmission Infrastructure Needs or ONDP for short, stated that offshore renewables would become the third-important energy resource in the European power system, providing 18% of the dispatched energy in 2040 and 2050.
That will be sufficient to supply up to 55m households in 2040 if everything runs according to the goals set by the EU member states.
Currently, a small fraction of the envisaged offshore renewable capacities have been installed. To reach 2030 ambitions, around 25.5 GW must be installed annually in the entire area, with EU countries needing to deliver 15 GW annually with Norway and Great Britain providing a total of 10.5 GW each year. For comparison, the EU currently has just under 20 GW of offshore wind, but by 2050 it wants to have at least 300 GW.
According to WindEurope, the average annual installation rate during the last ten years was 2.5 GW, meaning that the Offshore renewables expansion must be nine times as fast as it was during the last 10 years.
The ONDP predicts a potential figure of 384 GW of offshore renewables in the EU by 2050 with Norway and Great Britain contributing 15 and 97 GW respectively – a total of 496 GW in Europe as a whole.
Building all these additional wind farms will require a massive expansion of offshore grid capacity. To efficiently do that, ENTSO-E stated that future grid connections should be designed at the sea basin level rather than at the national level. So, five different ONDPs were presented, one each for the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic Basin, the West Mediterranean, the East Mediterranean, and the Black Sea.
The report identified a route length in the range of 48,000–54,000 km for offshore infrastructure installations – nearly 1.5 times around the equator – to facilitate the entire grid expansion.
ENTSO-E believes that 86% of offshore renewable energy clusters will still be radially connected by 2050 with 14% connected via offshore hybrid projects. These connections must be followed in parallel by onshore systems and match the offshore grid development at least at the same pace.
The ONDPs report found that, to optimally integrate offshore renewable energy capacities in the EU, Norway, and the UK by 2050, an investment of around €400bn is needed.
“The political support for the growth of offshore wind is extremely strong. Not just in the North Sea, but also in the Baltic, Atlantic, Mediterranean, the Black, and even the Caspian Sea. But the politics around grid access and grid connections, especially hybrid grid connections, are complicated. It’s essential to resolve the cost-sharing issue as soon as possible. Otherwise, the EU risks missing out on investments,” said Giles Dickson.
