Germans Agree to Increase 2030 Offshore Wind Target

The German Climate Cabinet has agreed to increase the country’s 2030 offshore wind capacity target from 15GW to 20GW. 

A group of economic and energy ministers, senators of five northern German states, representatives of the coastal cities and the industry signed the Cuxhaven Appeal 2.0 last year calling for an expansion goal of at least 20GW of offshore wind in the North and Baltic Seas by 2030.

Recently, the Association of German wind farm operators (BWO), BWE, Stiftung OFFSHORE-WINDENERGIE, VDMA Power Systems, and WAB urged the government to establish the 20GW by 2030 target, as well as set up a goal of at least 30GW by 2050.

The organizations said the existing goal of 15GW does not meet the target of covering 65% of the country’s power generation with renewables by 2030 and expansion targets must be raised across all renewable technologies.

They stated that a reliable framework needs to be set up and have called for a special tender to be launched for the development of up to 2GW of capacity, stating that all legal requirements should be met this year so it can be launched at the beginning of 2020.

According to BWO, it is now important to bring together offshore wind farm operators, transmission system operators and federal and state governments to together start the implementation as soon as possible.