The North Sea has long been host to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and hundreds of oil and natural gas production platforms. Now, if European leaders have their way, this shallow and often turbulent stretch of water could yield hundreds of billions of dollars in investments over the next few years aimed at reducing carbon emissions and further cutting fossil fuel imports from Russia.
At a summit in April in Ostend, a Belgian port, the leaders of nine European governments pledged to work together to roughly quadruple the already significant amount of offshore wind generation capacity in the North Sea and nearby waters by 2030 and increase it by about tenfold by 2050 .
Significantly, the meeting, attended by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union, included Britain, which recently endured a rancorous split from the bloc, and Norway, which is also not an EU member. The offshore areas around these two countries have the greatest potential for wind energy investment.
The goal of including all of these countries was “to give the perspective of making the North Sea the largest green power plant in the world by combining all those coastlines,” Alexander De Croo, the Prime Minister of Belgium, said in an interview.
Mr De Croo, whose government hosted the meeting, said it was vital for Britain, a world leader in offshore wind energy, to stay on board despite Brexit, its secession from the European Union. “Geographically, they’re not going to move,” he said. “In many cases they will continue to be a very, very important partner,” he added.
Seven EU members took part in the meeting, including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France, which are on the North Sea coast; Ireland, which is just a short boat ride from the British mainland; and Luxembourg, which Mr De Croo described as a ‘virtual North Sea country’.
What is driving the push for more offshore wind energy is a combination of growing concerns about climate change and a more recent determination to achieve energy independence from Russia, which has long been Europe’s main supplier of oil and natural gas.
Last winter, Russia tried to use gas as a weapon against Europe in its war with Ukraine. While Moscow’s manipulation of supplies drove up energy prices in Europe, it also convinced its best customers, Germany and other European countries, that they needed to find other sources of energy.
There are other reasons for Europe to look to the North Sea as an alternative source of energy. The waters off the coast of Northern Europe are blessed with high winds and shallow water suitable for turbine planting. Today’s offshore wind industry largely originated in Northern Europe and already generates a significant share of electrical power in some countries, including 25 percent in Denmark and 15 percent in Britain by 2022, according to industry group WindEurope.
Finding alternative energy sources is one of the topics discussed by leaders in business, politics and policy during London Climate Action Week, which runs through July 2.
Europe is also home to some of the world’s largest turbine manufacturers, including Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, a Spanish-headquartered company that is a leader in offshore machinery.
More spending on wind energy will support an industry that employs an estimated 300,000 people in Europe. While there are concerns that the shift to renewable energy sources will have devastating consequences for petroleum industry centers such as Stavanger in Norway and Aberdeen in Scotland, some oil and gas workers are finding employment in offshore wind energy.
It will not be easy to meet Europe’s hugely ambitious targets for installing more offshore wind energy. Due to lead times of five years or more (depending on lease awards and actual construction), “if you set a target in 2023, the earliest sample you can get in the water is 2027,” or 2028, Soren Lassen said, head of offshore wind research at Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy.
Although Europe has some of the largest turbine manufacturers, heavy investment in new models, inflation and other problems have undermined the financial performance of these companies. It can be difficult for them and their suppliers to pay to scale production as quickly as necessary. Although wind developers say they are proceeding with caution, building many large structures at sea, including (according to current plans) artificial islands, will undoubtedly have an impact on the marine environment.
Still, the general direction seems clear: more renewable energy to replace polluting fossil fuels. Offshore wind farms are attractive to investors and produce significant amounts of electrical power. “It makes sense to have a huge expansion of offshore wind, given that we need a lot of green power,” said Karsten Capion, a senior analyst at Concito, a Danish research firm.
The large projects now being built can provide enough power to light hundreds of thousands of homes and have turbines with blades over 90 meters long.
Industry executives say the North Sea could also be a promising laboratory for energy trading needed to balance a system dominated by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Because these energy sources are variable, to operate efficiently they need ways to discharge or store power during times of overproduction and access to flows from elsewhere when there are power shortages.
A network of high-capacity cables already runs along the bottom of the North Sea, allowing electricity to flow to the market with the highest price. For example, sometimes one of these interconnectors can carry power from nuclear power stations in France to Britain or hydropower from Norway to Germany.
As renewable sources become an increasing part of the energy system, such links will become essential. “Renewable energy in today’s and future’s system will create a need for collaboration,” said Hilde Tonne, CEO of Statnett, Norway’s electricity grid operator. You could say that the North Sea and offshore wind is “an opportunity to do what we need to do in our renewable energy system,” she added.
The shift is already yielding some futuristic innovations. Next year, ships and cranes are expected to go to work on an artificial island in the North Sea, about 30 miles off the coast of Belgium. Made mostly of sand, Princess Elisabeth Island covers nearly 60 acres of seafloor and costs about $2 billion.
Some people in the energy industry say the island is a harbinger of the future, when a greater part of Europe’s electricity grid will be placed offshore. The futuristic-looking structure, with high walls to protect it from the sea, will become a collection point for power cables from a large wind farm planned for nearby bodies of water. Cables will also connect these facilities to another island planned for the sea off Denmark and to Britain.
“Over time you will have a complete North Sea network of such hubs,” says Chris Peeters, CEO of Elia, the Belgian grid operator that is building the island.
Other plans for energy islands are also being prepared. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, an investment company in renewable energy, wants to build an island off the coast of Denmark on which to stand machines to make hydrogen, which is considered a clean fuel of the future, out of the wind. “We believe it is much more cost effective and also creates a lot of new value to have the infrastructure there,” said Thomas Dalsgaard, the executive responsible for planning the project.
Building huge structures in the sea to combat climate change is not without environmental risks. Filip De Bodt, fisheries campaigner at Climaxi, a Belgian environmental group, says the impact on marine life such as crabs and lobsters, as well as local fisheries, is unknown.
He is also concerned about the consequences of giant companies entering the maritime world. “The sea is no longer a sea, it is becoming an industrial place,” he said.
