Facts: Offshore wind potential

More wind

Much higher winds at sea, combined with more advanced technological development, will partially make up for the higher investments needed to build offshore facilities and connect them to the electrical grid. But the economic viability of offshore wind farms will depend heavily on the quality of sites. Two decisive factors in choosing sites are the depth of water and distance from the coast. Priority should be given to looking at relatively close areas no more than 50 kilometres from the coast and not more than 30 meters deep.

Potential

Different forecasts indicate that there is a lot of potential for exploiting offshore wind energy. But the forecasts show a wide variation because technological and economic viability is still uncertain. Besides, numerous other interests (shipping, fisheries, defence and nature conservation) all have the effect of reducing the calculated potential in practice.

The German government's plan

Under the overall management of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety (BMU), the German government has developed a plan to utilise offshore wind energy that takes nature conservation and other interests into account. Accordingly, the installation of 20,000 to 25,000 MW of offshore capacity is seen as possible by 2030. The timeframe for this plan provides for installing 500 MW of offshore wind capacity by 2007 and 2,000 to 3,000 MW by 2010. The plan also identifies low-conflict areas coming into consideration as possible special areas suitable for offshore wind energy use. Once these areas have been appraised with respect to different interests, they can be classified as special areas suitable for wind energy utilisation, based on the Marine Facilities Ordinance. Dena believes these goals can be realised in the period up to 2010. After that, however, more comprehensive additional measures will be needed in the energy sector.

North Sea and Baltic are good places to start

North Sea and Baltic regions will play a central role in the utilisation of offshore wind energy. First, the onshore use of wind energy has already progressed farthest in these regions, which means land sites are increasingly occupied. Second, wind energy will become competitive more quickly in northwestern Europe because of the comparatively high cost of electricity at the international level. Third, the North Sea and the Baltic are rather shallow and close to large population centres, making them very suitable for this form of energy. The development of offshore wind power consequently promises significant prospects for exporting electricity to neighbouring countries.