The German wind industry associations WAB, BWE, BWO, Stiftung Offshore-Windenergie and VDMA have published the expansion figures for offshore wind energy in the first half of 2019 for Germany. With an increase of 252 MW and 42 turbines, the industry is still on track. A total of 1,351 offshore wind turbines with 6,658 MW are currently connected to the grid.
In the first half of 2019, renewable energies accounted for 47.6 percent of power generation1; com-pared to the first six months of the previous year, offshore wind recorded an increase of around 30 percent.
According to the industry representatives of WAB, BWE, BWO, Stiftung Offshore-Windenergie, VDMA, the offshore-industry is delivering as expected, and it has increasingly developed towards a foundation of the energy transition.
The positive development of the value chain over the past few years will be considerably disrupted by a thread break that has now occurred. The 7.7 GW cap by 2020 has almost been reached. For the years thereafter, the framework conditions are lacking to be able to implement projects.
The industry now needs reliable, long-term framework conditions. This involves raising the expansion targets and launching a special tender before the end of the year, including the converter capacities that are still available according to the industry representatives. The expansion targets must be raised to at least 20 GW of installed offshore capacity by 2030 and at least 30 GW by 2035 in the German parts of the North Sea and Baltic Sea. A grid study published by WP&More Consulting and the law firm GGSC shows that the expansion of renewable energies in Germany does not have to be slowed down due to delayed grid expansion.
