Europe installed 1,558 MW of new offshore wind in 2016 with cumulative capacity reaching 12,631 MW.
The industry announced a record € 18.2 billion of investments in new wind farms to be built in the coming years. This represents a further 4.9 GW of new capacity across five countries, half of it in the UK.
European Additions
Last year’s 1.5 GW new installations were in three countries – Germany (813 MW), the Netherlands (691 MW) and the UK (56 MW) – spread across seven wind farms. They represent 338 wind turbines with an average size of 4.8 MW, up from 4.2 MW in 2015. Last year, saw the first 8 MW turbines deployed in the UK.
One Wind Turbine Every Day
Giles Dickson, Chief Executive Officer of WindEurope, said: 'We’ve installed on average one wind turbine every day in Europe for the last two years. With a strong pipeline of new projects on the way, we expect the numbers to rise quickly over the next four years. We should see over 3 GW of new installations in 2017. And we’re set to reach 25 GW total capacity by 2020 – double today’s level.'
Energy Transition
Beyond that there is a question mark. Germany, the Netherlands and the UK have signalled further build-out of offshore wind to 2030, but other countries have not yet, even though they are to start writing their Energy and Climate Change Action Plans as part of the EU Energy Union.
According to WindEurope, Europe needs to keep up the strong growth of offshore wind to deliver the energy transition. In addition, the organisation points out that offshore wind farms are becoming more affordable: the winning prices in the last four tenders show offshore wind is now competitive with all other forms of power generation.
