AMBITIOUS, BUT UNACHIEVABLE TARGETS FOR EUROPEAN WIND?

Manufacturers Voice Supply and Infrastructure Concerns

Cross-border cooperation, faster permitting/less bureaucracy, a strong supply chain and massive investments in offshore grid infrastructure, port facilities and vessels: the Marienborg Declaration has set an ambitious target for offshore wind in the Baltic Sea, and much will be needed to deliver on its commitments.

The Baltic Sea holds “a substantial but largely untapped potential for offshore wind,” says the Declaration. The target agreed by the eight signatories is 19.6 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, with plans to consider a 2040 target later on. To put this in perspective – in 2022, the Baltic Sea had just 2.8GW of installed offshore wind capacity.

This is not just about decarbonization; it is about the urgent need to phase out the dependence on Russian

Region: Europe

Problem: Supply chain support for lofty offshore wind targets in Europe could come up short

Solution: Targets need to be married with concrete commitments for projects in the region energy, a dependence which has been made painfully clear since Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Declaration notes that more offshore wind in the Baltic Sea can accelerate the phase-out of Russian energy by replacing fossil fuels, “through, for example, electrification, increasing renewable fuels, diversifying and decarbonizing gas-networks,

BY FELICITY LANDON

increased sector integration and a green hydrogen economy, including necessary transmission and pipeline infrastructure.”

Development of adequate power generation capacities, stronger grids and interconnections while removing internal bottlenecks, alongside a wellfunctioning internal energy market will increase the resilience and energy security of the countries involved, it says.

So far, so good. But setting targets is one thing – achieving them is something else entirely.

“The Marienborg Declaration with the target to install almost 20GW of offshore wind turbines in the Baltic Sea by 2030 is important for Vestas and can make a difference,” said Johannes Schiel, director of public affairs for Northern and Central

Europe at Vestas. As he pointed out, it is one of a series of such declarations in Europe and globally, specifying targets for offshore wind energy. In May 2022, the governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany set targets for their ambitions in the North Sea, for 65GW by 2030. With the North Sea Energy Cooperation, France, Ireland, Luxemburg and Norway joined the club and increased the interim target to 76GW, with further targets of 193GW in 2040 and 260GW in 2050.

“There’s a big ‘but’, however,” Schiel said. “Targets help us to prepare investment decisions, but concrete projects are key. And what we experienced in many European countries in 2022 was in fact a market that – despite more targets – was shrinking, rather than growing. European countries need to strengthen the wind energy supply chain and overcome the slow and bureaucratic process to hand out new permits. Otherwise, the best targets won’t make an impact.”

Targets Must Be Realistic

Jagna Kubańska-Łyczakowska, head of public affairs in Poland at Vestas, said that targets are as realistic as the measures that are taken to reach the targets. “The steps we see in Poland, the Baltic States and the Nordic countries around the Baltic Sea are fast and impressively large. We see the projects from the first round in Poland materializing and those of the second round ahead. Lithuania as well as jointly Estonia and Latvia are taking brave ambitious steps. The targets of Sweden and Finland are specific and impressive.”

Marine resources, skills and infrastructure are available in Poland and around the Baltic Sea, but also need to be much further developed, he said. “We are supporting this – based on our workforce in Poland with more than 600 employees – mostly based in Szczecin and working in onshore wind, but we will soon have a similar amount of workers in our new factory in Szczecin.”

Without targets, long-term investments in infrastructure such as ports, logistics including installation vessels or production capacities like the Vestas assembly factory in Szczecin, would not be possible, Kubańska-Łyczakowska said.

“To decide on investments, we need to consider the long-term strategy of the region, the visibility of the potential order pipeline, the presence of our partners and stakeholders, and a lot of other commercial factors which go into the decision-making process. Order intakes and preferred supplier agreements like the 1.2GW Baltic Power project in Poland give us, therefore, leeway.”

Baltic Power, a joint venture between PKN Orlen SA and Northland Power Inc, has chosen Vestas as its preferred turbine supplier for this project, located 23 kilometers off the Polish coast, near Łeba. Once completed, it will be Poland’s largest wind project to date.

The Vestas factory, due to open in the second half of 2024, will assemble nacelles and hubs for the V236-15.0MW offshore wind turbine, supporting domestic and global demand.

The fact that Vestas is building this factory shows confidence in how attractive the region is for offshore wind, said Lizet

Ramirez, Wind Europe’s offshore and floating wind expert.

“The Polish offshore wind market has gained a lot of momentum and is on track to become one of the countries with more than 5 percent market share by the end of this decade. They plan to have at least 5.9GW installed – and these are the projects already secured,” she said.

The way that Vestas can set up the supply chain at/from Szczecin makes sense, Ramirez said – producing the components close to where they will be needed.

Hurdles Of Shortage And Delays

Wind Europe sees the Marienborg Declaration as “a great start”, but Ramirez highlighted issues around regulations, delays in permitting and a predicted shortage of installation capacity.

In mid-2022, Wind Europe and the Polish Wind Energy Association published a report on the availability of offshore wind vessels up to 2030, focusing on the Baltic Sea region. The conclusion was that investments in new vessels are urgently needed for Poland and other Baltic Sea countries to deliver their offshore wind ambitions.

“For the Baltic Sea, almost 2,300 foundations and turbines will have to be installed and most of the new foundations will be heavier than 2,000 tonnes,” Ramirez said. “Almost half of the turbines will be 15 megawatts (MW) or more – very large turbines. Approximately 4,000 kilometers of

Ulstein export cables and 4,600 kilometers of inter-array cables are required to build what is needed by 2030. It is challenging; it is crucial that the countries that have a target set ways to support the expansion of the supply chain.”

The report concluded there would be a shortage of foundation installation vessels, or FIVs, and wind turbine installation vessels, or WTIVs, by 2024 and 2025, but the biggest demand for FIVs and WTIVs will be between 2028 and 2030. “By the end of the decade, single turbines could reach up to 20MW in scale. During the peak, 5-10 FIVs and 5-9 WTIVs will be needed in the Baltic Sea. These vessels are facing additional challenges as offshore wind turbines are increasing in size and weight.”

For cable laying vessels, the gap between supply and demand will be even greater over the next eight years, said the report. Poland alone would need three to four of these vessels.

Ramirez said it was important that the Baltic Sea countries viewed this as a whole industrial strategy. “There are ways we can reduce the number of vessels needed – maximizing their usage by means of cooperation.”

Because the wind farms will neighbor each other, sometimes just a few kilometers apart, governments can insist on a cooperation/phased approach. In the case of WTIVs, this could reduce the number needed from nine to five in the early years and from 13 to seven towards the end of the decade, Ramirez said.

“It is not easy to ask a developer that has been designing a wind farm only looking at their own project to then work with someone else,” she noted. “But we should get the most benefits possible.”

More dramatically, she said if there is no cooperation on foundation installation, the Baltic Sea would be using almost half of the FIVs available in the world today.

“We can schedule projects to alleviate pressure on the supply chain – not everyone needs the same commissioning date. We know most of the contractors will be reluctant to do this but if we continue building as we are, we will only hit half of our targets.”

There is a clear trend for shortening the supply chain by setting up manufacturing sites closer to (or at) ports, Ramirez said. “Otherwise you have heavy, large components being transported by road or ship, which is more expensive. You have to think about minimizing the lifting and the transport distances. These are the solutions we are seeing.”

European

Construction Support

Wind Europe believes European companies are still very well placed to manufacture wind turbine components, she said, with the expertise to make turbines more efficient, resilient and adaptable to the coming challenges. “In terms of technology and innovation, it is Europe that is driving this.”

However, there is a ‘but’ here too. “The topic to mention is raw materials. China supplies about half of these,