Press releases

The German OFFSHORE WINDENERGIE Foundation welcomes the decision of the Climate Cabinet on Friday to increase the expansion targets for offshore wind energy to 20 GW by 2030: "Increasing the expansion targets is an important signal for climate and industrial policy. In this way, additional jobs can be created while protecting the climate at the same time," said Andreas Wagner, managing director of the foundation.

On behalf of the German wind industry associations, Deutsche Wind-Guard today 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.

The two energy research projects MIGRATE and PROMOTioN, funded within the framework of the EU research programme HORIZON 2020, are holding their first joint workshop today in Berlin under the title "Technical challenges and recommendations for the future European power grid".

Today in Berlin, the most important industry associations presented the current figures for offshore wind energy in Germany for the year 2018. Their core message is: "2019 must be the year of progress in energy policy. Offshore wind energy is of central importance for the achievement of climate protection targets and secures value creation in Germany as an in-dustrial player".

The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) has announced that in future it will no longer be necessary to periodically renew the yellow full-surface paint covering the substructures of offshore wind turbines. The agency considers the requirements for the initial coating to be sufficient to comply with international recommendations and standards.

Berlin, 19 July 2018 -The German government has set the goal of covering 65 percent of the country’s power generation from renewable energies by 2030. From an offshore wind industry perspective, the German government is doing too little to achieve this goal. No concrete steps have been taken since the formation of government in March 2018. As stipulated in the coalition agreement, additional ten-ders for offshore wind energy and an increase in the offshore expansion paths are needed as soon as possible, alongside a rapid increase of the expansion paths for all renewables.

“With a total output capacity of more than 5.3 GW, offshore wind turbines make an increasing contri-bution to the security of Germany’s energy supply. They deliver clean power almost around the clock, every day of the year,” industry representatives from AGOW, the BWE, the German Offshore Wind Energy Foundation, VDMA Power Systems and the WAB explained in Berlin during the presentation of the latest expansion figures for offshore wind energy. “The expansion of offshore wind energy is run-ning to plan.”

Arnhem/Berlin, 21 September 2017. On 11.09.2017, SCiBreak became the 35th project partner of the PROMOTioN consortium. SCiBreak is a Swedish company founded in 2014 to commercialise new technology for interrupting electric current.

Economic and energy ministers of several northern German states are calling on the federal government to facilitate the deployment of offshore wind energy.Ministers and senators from Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hamburg and Bremen have presented the Cuxhaven Appeal 2.0 in conjunction with industry representatives.

In the first half of 2017, 108 offshore wind turbines with a combined capacity of 626MW fed power into Germany's national grid for the first time. Therefore as of 30 June 2017 a total of 1,055 offshore wind turbines with a total capacity to 4,749MW are on the grid. These are encouraging half-year figures, according to Arbeitsgemeinschaft Offshore-Windenergie (AGOW), Bundesverband WindEnergie (BWE), Stiftung OFFSHORE-WINDENERGIE, VDMA Power Systems and WAB e.V. The industry expects a total increase of approximately 900MW for 2017 as a whole. In the first half of 2017, offshore wind energy produced 8,480GWh of electricity, already roughly 70% of last year's total output.