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In the United States, the Trump administration is waging a relentless war on offshore wind, taking an all-of-government approach to thwarting construction of turbines at sea.
On the other side of the Atlantic, however, 10 European countries have formed an alliance to build out 100 gigawatts of offshore wind power and transform the North Sea into what German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called “the world’s largest clean energy reservoir.”
On Monday, officials from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom met in Hamburg to sign a declaration vowing to collaborate on construction of enough offshore wind capacity to power nearly 150 million households by 2050. The document, dubbed the Hamburg Declaration, affirms a goal of building a total of 300 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in the region, although only a third of that would come from international projects that involve cross-border collaboration. The remaining two-thirds would come from national projects built by countries to send power to their own grids.
At least 100 companies signed onto an accompanying industry declaration in which they promise to cut the costs of offshore wind installations and hire upward of 91,000 workers.
“This is a move not just to establish European energy independence, but to support a strategic sector that’s had a very difficult few years,” said Ollie Metcalfe, the head of wind research at the consultancy BloombergNEF.
Europe has faced energy shortages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, forcing Kyiv’s allies to wean themselves off the cheap natural gas the Kremlin had shipped westward for decades. The continent ramped up imports of American liquefied natural gas, but that proved very expensive and has left Europe vulnerable to the Trump administration’s bullying on issues such as Greenland’s sovereignty. Nuclear power produces roughly one-quarter of Europe’s electricity, but building new reactors can take well over a decade and some countries, including Luxembourg, remain firmly opposed to atomic energy. In cloudy Northern Europe, with its limited solar potential, harnessing the fierce gusts on the North Sea with offshore turbines represents one of the best options to produce large volumes of power.
Implementing the pact will prove harder than signing it. Countries with lower electricity prices are likely to encounter pushback over a cross-border compact with nations whose energy-market policies have driven up rates. Norway boasts relatively low electricity prices thanks to its vast system of hydroelectric dams. Already, exports of Norwegian electricity to the continent, where Germany’s decision to shut down its nuclear power plants helped push its rates to some of the highest levels in the world, have stirred political blowback in the Nordic nation.
“Sometimes the technical stuff sounds like the most difficult to overcome, but in reality it’s the political and regulatory barriers that end up being the most difficult to solve,” Metcalfe said.
Norway may contribute the fewest turbines under the pact, BloombergNEF forecasts, because its continental shelf drops sharply into deep water, making it difficult to site traditional turbines bolted to the seafloor. Norway has experimented with floating turbines, but the technology is much less mature. And the country’s offshore energy industry has traditionally focused on oil and gas. (Landlocked Luxembourg, which lacks a shoreline, is contributing financing to the deal.)
Europe’s homegrown offshore wind giants, such as Norway’s Equinor and Denmark’s Ørsted, are likely vendors for the buildout, said Gaurav Purohit, the Germany-based vice president of European asset finance at the credit-ratings agency Morningstar DBRS. With the U.S. government bearing down on projects such as Ørsted’s Revolution Wind in New England and Equinor’s Empire Wind in New York, he said the North Sea buildout would allow the companies to redirect capital back to Europe.
Other likely winners of the offshore wind push include the German utility RWE, German transmission giants TenneT and Amprion, and the French energy giant TotalEnergies, which has committed to a big renewables buildout — a contrarian move among oil majors. While China’s soaring offshore wind companies are looking to enter the European market, “I do think European developers will benefit more,” Purohit said.
But he cautioned that the high cost of building offshore wind, particularly when interest rates are elevated and inflation is driving up the price of materials, means that projects would likely “need financial institutions to take a stake.”
Increasing the transmission connections is key, said Matt Kennedy, an executive who heads up sustainability issues for IDA Ireland, the government agency that attracts foreign investment. Right now, the island nation on the EU’s western fringe is connected to other grid systems only by power lines to the United Kingdom. In 2028, the Celtic Interconnector, a 700-megawatt power line connecting Ireland to France, is set to come online, establishing the first direct transmission between the Emerald Isle and the continent. Kennedy said the two-way line will likely hasten construction of offshore wind in Ireland, where the industry has been stunted by planning bottlenecks and, like Norway, a steep continental shelf dropoff. Ireland, which already has a large onshore wind industry, has 7 gigawatts of offshore turbines approved.
Establishing a link to France “really sets the pace for us to be able to deliver on our commitment,” Kennedy said.
“This is a radical step,” he added. “It’s a massive step for Ireland in terms of providing that enabling architecture to access the European market. This will allow us to export an abundance of renewable energy that we plan to have, but also in times of need allows us to import.”
The pact is not renewable energy for the sake of going green, said Ed Miliband, the British secretary of state for energy security and net zero.
“Our view on offshore wind energy is hard-headed, not soft-hearted,” he said, according to Euronews. “I think offshore wind is for winners. Different countries will pursue their national interests, but we are very clear where our interests lie.”
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