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"The North Sea as a future motor for clean energies": Offshore plant off the French coast
Photo: STEPHANE MAHE / REUTERS
By 2050, the EU wants to become climate-neutral.
An important building block for this is the generation of electricity by wind power.
There is a lot of potential for this, especially in the offshore area, i.e. on the open sea.
The countries bordering the North Sea have therefore joined forces to form a "North Sea Energy Cooperation" (NSEC) and have formulated ambitious goals for the coming years.
In a joint declaration by the energy ministries of the nine countries involved (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden), concrete expansion targets were recently set in Dublin: by 2030, the North Sea region is to have 76 gigawatts (GW) of electricity per year 193 GW are planned by 2040 and even 260 GW by 2050.
This would mean that around 85 percent of the EU-wide proportion of offshore wind turbines needed to achieve climate neutrality would come from the North Sea.
"The North Sea is our future engine for clean and reliable green electricity from offshore wind energy. But we can only leverage the huge potential together with our partners," said Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection
Stefan Wenzel
(60; Greens) in Dublin .
The most recent NSEC meeting took place in the Irish capital, as this year the country holds the presidency of the cooperation, which was founded back in 2016.
A closely linked offshore network between the countries is planned, in which the approval procedures are to be accelerated both at national and at European level.
According to the "Repower EU" plan, what used to take five or six years should now be implemented within a year.
The network infrastructure at sea is also to become more flexible and efficient, with the NSEC relying primarily on improved digitization and close cooperation.
Special cooperation in five North Sea ports
Five European North Sea ports will play a key role in these plans: the Danish Port of Esbjerg, the Belgian Port Oostende, the Groningen Seaports/Eemshaven in the Netherlands and the Nantes-Saint Nazaire Port in France, as well as Cuxhaven in Lower Saxony.
Because the German share in the expansion of offshore wind energy is also set to grow – and by 2030 it will be 30 GW.
In 2050, the capacity should then be increased to 70 GW.
The wind turbines on the North Sea are currently feeding almost 8 GW into the German power grid.
The cooperation between the neighboring countries and their ports, which are most important for wind power, envisages a significant increase in both the speed of construction of the systems and the size.
According to the so-called Esbjerg Declaration written in May 2022, individual systems that run side by side as before should be a thing of the past.
Power lines should not only be networked on land, but already offshore.
Representatives from the five ports will also meet regularly in future to exchange their experiences and new knowledge and to provide mutual support, including in the event of possible bottlenecks in the expansion of the wind turbines.
High IT requirements for critical infrastructure
Following the acts of sabotage as a result of the Ukraine war, topics such as cyber security are also increasingly in the spotlight.
Here, for example, Siemens Energy will for the first time also supply its control technology system, which is already established in conventional power plants, to an offshore wind farm.
This EnBW wind farm called "He Dreiht", which is scheduled to go into operation at the end of 2025, is being built on the German North Sea coast off the island of Borkum.
In addition to the control technology for the switchgear, the company also supplies the central IT network including cyber security solutions - these are intended to ensure that the system meets the legal requirements for the critical infrastructure.
"Offshore wind farms are a key building block in the climate-neutral energy mix of the future," says
Tim Holt
(53), Member of the Managing Board of Siemens Energy.