On 30 January, the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) published a new Site Development Plan for offshore wind which paves the way to reaching the country’s targets of having 40 GW of offshore wind capacity in operation by 2035 and 70 GW by 2045. According to the new plan, Germany will auction off ten sites with a total capacity of 12 GW over the next four years, starting this year.
Site Development Plan 2025 builds on areas identified earlier and on the previous plan issued in 2023. With the areas newly defined in the latest plan, BSH pinpointed an additional expansion capacity in the North Sea in areas N-9, N-12 and N-13 with an expected total capacity of 8 GW.
The majority of the wind farms in these areas, with an expected installed capacity of 6 GW, are scheduled to go into operation by the end of 2034. Together with the offshore wind farms that have already been approved or are under construction, and the areas already defined in the 2023 plan for commissioning by 2032, the expected total capacity in 2034 is around 42.6 GW .
For the Baltic Sea, no additional areas and sites were defined compared to the 2023 plan. BSH says that in a future update, further areas could be defined for commissioning in 2034 and later.
The plan also outlines tendering timelines for all areas.
The Site Development Plans are technical plans that set out site boundaries and a roadmap for the construction of offshore wind farms and their grid connections in the German exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, and are updated regularly.
The current update serves primarily to achieve the expansion targets of at least 40 GW by 2035 and at least 70 GW by 2045, according to BSH.
A couple of days before issuing the new development plan, BSH published the 5th Ordinance on the Implementation of the Offshore Wind Energy Act (5th WindSeeG), marking two areas, N-10.1 and N-10.2, suitable for the construction and operation of offshore wind farms, which is a prerequisite for the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) to issue a tender for the areas in the EEZ.
Germany currently has 9.2 GW of offshore wind capacity operational in the North and Baltic Seas.
At the beginning of January, BNetzA said German renewable energy capacity grew by nearly 20 GW in 2024, reaching almost 190 GW, with solar and wind energy accounting for the majority of the increase.
In 2024, a total of 700 MW of offshore wind capacity was brought online, which is more than double the amount added in the previous year.