At the North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC) ministerial meeting in Odense (Denmark) on Thursday 24 October, European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson called for offshore wind farm projects to be speeded up.
She pointed out that Europe currently has 35 GW of installed offshore wind turbines and that the targets set were 110 GW by 2030 and more than 300 GW by 2050, as established in the Ostend Declaration in 2023 (see EUROPE 13168/14).
The Odense meeting brought together a number of countries bordering the North Sea (Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway and Ireland) and the European Commission, with the aim of turning the objectives set into reality and agreeing on their 2025-2027 work programme.
As a priority, the Commissioner expressed the need to work further on a more coordinated planning framework and to ensure a fair distribution of costs and benefits.
With regard to investment, she pointed out that the partner countries must assess the nature and scale of the investment required and explore innovative approaches.
She also stressed the need to rapidly implement the measures adopted as part of the ‘Fit for 55’ legislation.
“The transmission access guarantee set out in the revised Electricity Market Design, for example, needs to be developed at network code level”, she emphasised.
In addition, she argued that proactive investment to support development of the offshore grid could be accelerated with a new focus and support for developing offshore renewable hydrogen in the North Seas.
As well as making recommendations to the new European Commission, the meeting adopted a new NSEC work programme 2025-2027 for its five support groups: “Hybrid and Joint Projects”, “Maritime Spatial Planning and Ecology”, “Support Framework and Finance”, “Coordinated Long-Term Planning” and “Offshore Renewable Hydrogen”.
To see the programme: https://aeur.eu/f/e1i (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)