EU eyes offshore wind power boost

The European Commission has launched a public consultation to identify key barriers to the large-scale uptake of offshore wind energy and help draw up an action plan later this year.

According to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), offshore wind “will be one of the key components” of the delivery of the EU target to source 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The potential for offshore wind energy is considered huge, especially in the North Sea and the Atlantic where the winds are strongest and most stable. A recent Norwegian study estimated that a potential 14,000 TWh could be harvested in the waters off the Norwegian coast alone. “It is a fact beyond doubt that there is a strong and persistent wind outside the Norwegian coast. Even if only a fraction can be harvested it might be big,” said Hans De Keulenaer, an engineer at the European Copper Institute.

According to EWEA, 50 GW of offshore wind could be installed by 2020 if offshore was to grow at the same rate as onshore wind has done in the past fourteen years. However, it said this is unlikely to happen due “lead times for planning, lack of physical infrastructure, long project development times and short-term supply chain bottlenecks”.

Challenges already widely known

According to De Keulenaer, the technology to build offshore wind farms is already widely available. “The big turbines and the ability to build high-rise structures to put the turbines at the proper height is already well-known and hardly a technological problem,” the engineer wrote on Blogactiv, a blog platform. “The issue is how you make the constructions stay where they should,” he said.

Loïc Blanchard, a senior policy advisor at EWEA, agrees. “What is more important in this consultation is that the Commission is asking for stakeholders’ views on actions that might be taken to address these barriers, especially at EU level,” he told EURACTIV.

Ferran Tarradellas, a spokesperson on energy at the European Commission, says there are still “many unknowns” which the consultation should help identify. Among those, he says there are still “many questions” regarding conditions of access to the power grid for renewable electricity produced from offshore wind farms. 

He also says there are “many differences between EU member states” on legislation relating to environmental impact studies prior to the approval of large offshore wind projects.

The Commission’s worries echo criticisms already voiced by Vestas, a Danish company leading the world market for wind turbines. At a recent conference in Norway, Hans Vestergaard, sales director at Vestas, said permitting procedures should be made “more uniform and less time consuming within the EU”. It also pleaded for “a European grid and tariff” to be applied to wind power. 

Other bottlenecks identified by Vestas include the limited availability of vessels equipped with the massive cranes needed to erect the ever-larger wind turbines and the corresponding harbour facilities that are needed to equip the ships. 

EWEA has long called for the EU to develop a specific policy for offshore wind. In a report published in December 2007, it said the technology was still facing “many uncertainties”, including:

• Technological development and deployment;
• Planning and authorisation to allow large-scale wind farms to be built;
• Developing the necessary electricity grid infrastructure, and;
• Better integrating large-scale production of renewable electricity into the power exchange mechanisms between member states.

“If barriers are timely and adequately removed, up to 40 GW of offshore wind energy could be operating in the European Union by 2020,” Blanchard said. This, he added, could supply up to 4% of Europe’s electricity, “an essential contribution for the EU to reach the 20% target by 2020”.

Read more with Euractiv

EU eyes raise of emergency oil stocks as prices soar

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on whether changes should be made to the management of emergency oil stocks held by EU member states as oil prices edged closer to $120 a barrel on Tuesday (22 April).