In order to achieve its climate-neutral objective by 2050, the European Union will have to multiply its offshore renewable energy production capacity by 25 times by that date, says the draft EU strategy on offshore renewables, obtained by EUROPE on Thursday 5 November.
According to this document, increasing renewable energy production is “the necessary precondition for the success” of the transition to a carbon-neutral society so that more sectors of the European economy can use electricity directly from renewables.
The Commission is therefore targeting 300 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2050 and about 60 GW of marine energy, compared to current capacities of 12 GW and 13 MW respectively.
For 2030, the ambition is to reach 60 GW of offshore wind power and 1 to 3 GW of marine power, the document states, while specifying that the deployment of large capacities could make it possible to achieve an average cost of around 50 euros per MWh in 2030.
These objectives call for a strong acceleration of the deployment of these technologies, the Commission concedes. The current rate of installation (+3 GW per year) and the projected rate after 2030 (+7 GW per year) would in fact only make it possible to achieve about 90 GW of offshore wind energy in 2050.
Nevertheless, in addition to the benefits in terms of decarbonisation of electricity production, the institution believes that achieving these objectives would bring significant benefits in terms of employment and growth, contributing to post-Covid recovery.
Measures envisaged
In terms of the measures envisaged, this draft strategy does not include any new dedicated legislative initiatives.
Instead, the Commission intends to establish, in the course of next year, a framework for Member States to define their common commitment to deploy offshore renewable energy in each sea basin up to 2050.
These long-term commitments would identify suitable sites and the planned installed capacity for each sea basin and could take the form of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Member States concerned, the document points out.
As part of the revision of the Trans-European Energy Networks (TEN-E) Regulation (347/2013), scheduled for 9 December, the Commission will work to facilitate offshore grid planning, including for offshore hybrid projects combining connection to the offshore wind grid with cross-border interconnection.
The institution also wants to clarify the regulatory framework for offshore bidding zones for hybrid projects. A dedicated appendix is included in the preliminary draft.
It will also propose a legislative amendment in 2022 to allow Member States to allocate congestion income more flexibly for offshore hybrid projects.
The Commission also intends to work with Member States to integrate the offshore renewable energy development targets from the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) into their maritime spatial planning plans.
These plans must be submitted to the Commission before 31 March 2021 and are intended to identify the spatial and temporal distribution of activities in the marine waters of EU countries, with a view to ensuring, in particular, that wind power can coexist with fishing or maritime transport.
“The scaling up and developments in offshore wind industry are estimated to occupy less than 3% of the European maritime space and can be achieved in a way compatible with strong protection of the environment and biodiversity”, says the preliminary draft.
Financing
According to the document, the investment needed to reach 300 GW of offshore wind and 60 GW of ocean energy by 2050 would amount to around €789 billion, of which around two thirds would be for the associated grid infrastructure and one third for offshore production.
The Commission therefore intends to encourage Member States to use the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the centrepiece of the post-Covid-19 European Recovery Plan, for the deployment of renewable energy, including offshore.
It will also develop an investment programme for 10 large-scale marine energy technology projects by 2025, combining Horizon Europe, InvestEU, national public funding and private funding.
The institution also intends to launch the first EU-wide calls for tender under the Renewable Energy Financing Mechanism (see EUROPE 12562/3), which will be operational starting 1 January, 2021.
Finally, it will ensure that the revision of the State Aid rules for energy and environmental protection (planned before the end of 2021) provides a suitable framework for the cost-effective deployment of offshore renewable energy.
The presentation of the strategy on offshore renewable energy is scheduled for 18 November.
See the draft strategy: https://bit.ly/32dBEtK (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)