Germany's Onshore Wind Power Additions Not Enough To Meet 2030 Targets - OilPrice.com
Germany’s Onshore Wind Power Additions Not Enough To Meet 2030 Targets | OilPrice.com
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Germany’s onshore wind power installations jumped in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year, but despite the momentum, capacity additions are still too low to meet government targets, industry association VDMA said on Tuesday.
In the first half of this year, as many as 331 onshore wind turbines (WTGs) with a cumulative capacity of 1,565 megawatts (MW) were installed in Germany, according to a report by Deutsche WindGuard on behalf of industry groups BWE and VDMA Power Systems.
Gross additions in the first half of 2023 already amounted to 65% of the additions in the whole of 2022.
For 2023, the upper range of the associations’ forecast of 2.7 to 3.2 GW onshore wind capacity installations is likely achievable, VDMA said.
However, the addition of new capacity falls short of the requirements to reach the target of 115 GW of onshore wind capacity in 2030, the association added.
The BWE and VDMA associations noted that “even the significantly rising number of approvals is still far from sufficient to support the expansion target of 10 GW per year from 2025.”
“The discrepancy between reality and targets is currently still too high and can only be reduced by consistent and rapid implementation of the measures adopted at the federal level,” the associations said.
Red tape slows down new construction, while the rise in production capacity needs to have visibility on profitability. The German states and local authorities must implement the federal government's measures to accelerate further the rollout of onshore wind, the associations noted.
Last week, Germany held a landmark offshore wind tender, in which energy supermajors BP and TotalEnergies won all of the 7 GW capacity on offer. BP secured leases at two North Sea sites off the coast of Helgoland with total generating potential of about four gigawatts, while TotalEnergies secured the other two sites.
Germany currently has 8.4 GW of operational offshore wind capacity.
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By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.