At a North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC) Ministerial Meeting held on 24 October in Odense, Denmark, the energy ministers of nine North Sea countries signed a new declaration which, among other things, calls for a digital transparency tool for offshore wind tenders and supply chain capacities. NSEC ministers also issued recommendations for hybrid offshore wind projects and a new approach to financing.
The new digital transparency tool would build upon the NSEC tender tool and the EU platform on renewable energy sources (RES) tender planning, and would first be used in the North Seas region but would ultimately cover the whole of Europe.
The digital tool would comprise the pipeline of tenders and auctions, requirements for certain equipment, such as cable lengths, manufacturing capacity of key components, production facilities in Europe, and port capacity.
NSEC is also proposing exploring a dedicated platform that would contain production demands of components and technical equipment, especially things such as transmission cables, to facilitate strategic investments at a necessary scale rather than a project-specific scale.
In the newly signed declaration , NSEC ministers also call for a new approach to offshore financing to unlock financing at sea-basin level, with preliminary discussions on establishing an “offshore regional facility” already underway.
The facility could support funding of meshed grid infrastructure and hybrid offshore projects and would be based on voluntary cooperation between the European Commission, Member States, private investors and possibly non-EU countries which could support offshore projects.
Following the meeting and the new declaration being signed, WindEurope welcomed the move and said that by the end of 2025, Europe will be able to manufacture 9.5 GW of offshore wind turbines a year with European companies investing at least EUR 10 billion in new factories and expanding existing ones.
The European wind energy industry organisation also said Europe needs to set the regulatory framework and define a cost-sharing formula for hybrid offshore wind projects as soon as possible and that hybrid projects are the future of offshore wind in the North Seas.
“Well done to the North Seas Energy Ministers for identifying exactly what needs to happen to increase momentum on offshore wind. And for spelling out clearly what the EU needs to do to on this over its new 5 year mandate. Further action to strengthen the supply chain. A big push on grid build-out especially for the cross-border ‘hybrid’ projects backed up by a dedicated offshore financing facility. And the full involvement of the UK in all of this”, said WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson .
The declaration was signed by nine energy ministers of NSEC member countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway.
Last year, NSEC, together with the European Commission (EC), launched joint planning of offshore wind tenders.
The collective NSEC tender planning translates the nine NSEC member countries’ broad ambitions into auctioning around 15 GW of offshore wind capacity every year and awarding almost 100 GW until 2030.
In 2022, the NSEC countries and the UK agreed on joint offshore wind targets of at least 120 GW in 2030 and 300 GW by 2050.
At the end of 2023, NSEC issued a report calling for “immediate action” on developing new port infrastructure and upgrading existing port facilities to reach the joint offshore wind target for 2030.