In this light, offshore wind energy, concentrated mainly in the North Sea region, represents a huge untapped potential to meet the EU’s climate and energy targets. Abundant offshore resources over-strip the onshore capacity limited to EU territory, and can potentially meet up to 60% of the projected electricity demand in the EU by 2020 according to the European Environment Agency (EEA). In the UK alone, the Government’s ambitious plans to develop its vast offshore wind potential in the Crown Estate waters can supply the country with one quarter of its electricity by 2020.
But a path to exploiting the full potential of the offshore treasures will be long and thorny. At present, many hurdles exist across the EU that slow down the development of this alternative energy. In the first instance, the current grid infrastructure is inadequate to cope with increasing volumes of renewable electricity fed into it. Europe must invest into modernising its power grid, equipping it with smart technology and enabling it to incorporate growing quantities of dispersed renewable electricity. What is more important is to stop thinking of electricity grids as national systems, and start building interconnectors that extend across Europe and include offshore wind farms. The European Commission is currently working on a ‘Blueprint for a North Sea Grid’, while one of its agencies, ENTSO-E, is charged with drafting a ‘10 Year Network Development Plan’; both of which will hopefully tackle the current grid setbacks.
Another area of concern is legal uncertainty and the risk of stranded investments for potential offshore wind developers. The latter is currently being tackled by various European and national proposals, such as setting EU-wide targets and guaranteeing returns on a national level. Many countries, including the UK, Spain and Germany have introduced feed-in tariffs to boost alternative energy generation. However, the problems related to legal uncertainties persist. This mainly concerns regulatory differences in application and authorisation processes across the Member States when it comes to wind park construction. For instance, the ambitious North Sea Offshore Grid plan (to integrate offshore energy grid which links wind farms and other renewable energy sources across the 9 North Sea states), is running into delays with some operators having to wait up to 8 years for authorisation of inter-state connections.
A further issue not to be neglected is the lack of related infrastructure, such as vessels, harbours and other port facilities needed to construct and maintain offshore wind parks. Provision of these will require significant funding and resources. Interesting in this regard is a new Dutch ‘harbour at sea’ concept, whereby a multi-purpose platform is built at sea aiming at reducing sailing times for installation and maintenance of offshore wind farms. Equally, a trained workforce equipped with new skills is important.
Hence, to overcome all the afore-mentioned hurdles, some serious political will is needed from all European stakeholders. For the moment what is driving the expansion of the renewable energy industry in Europe is, on the one hand, the 20% target inscribed into the 2008 Renewable Energy Directive, and on the other, the pressing need to enhance energy security. More is needed, however, to curb the costs of offshore energy generation. Thus, in its Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan, the European Commission has rightly identified this alternative energy source as one of the key technologies for the EU low-carbon future. This should boost funding for research, development and demonstration, while enabling the cost of offshore wind energy to decrease and the economies of scale to develop. Onshore wind industry followed the same downwards trend some 10 years ago. In short, some experts point out that to tap the potential of the North Sea offshore wind resources, political, technological and industrial commitments should be on the same scale as those of the North Sea oil and gas venture.
In 2009, the EU (the UK, Denmark and Germany) were the market leaders in offshore wind power generation. But with the US and China quickly following suit, the political and economic momentum should not be lost. After all, offshore wind energy represents one of the greatest answers to Europe’s climate and energy dilemma: it will reduce carbon emissions, while enhancing the Continent’s energy security and creating thousands of new jobs.
Posted on August 12, 2010
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