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North Sea wind power to multiply around 10 fold

4C Offshore | Matthew White
By: Matthew White 24/05/2018 Energinet
EnerginetThis was the message from the North Sea Wind Power Hub consortium, it was given the opportunity to present its vision for the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM).

This year's Clean Energy Ministerial was held as a central part of the Nordic Clean Energy Week in Copenhagen and Malmo. The North Sea Wind Power Hub consortium, consisting of Energinet, Gasunie, Port of Rotterdam, TenneT Netherlands and TenneT Germany, was given the opportunity to present its vision for energy ministers from, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands. The chairman of Energinet, Lars Barfoed, chaired the presentation.

"The consortium's common vision is both daring and simple at once," says Lars Barfoed, chairman of the board of Energinet. "We want to establish a central hub in the North Sea, where large-scale offshore wind farms can be linked and new power lines and trade relations between the North Sea countries will be created."

By 2040, North Sea offshore wind turbines are expected to generate 70-150 gigawatts of electricity, which will amount to approximately 20% of the EU's electricity consumption. 

This is about 7-15 times as much wind production, as found today in the North Sea. In order for this to succeed, there must be a careful degree of planning and coordination between the countries. At the same time, there will be huge costs to save on the infrastructure through a regional approach. Instead of landing each country's own offshore wind farms, first estimates show that up to 30% of costs can be saved through a common solution. 

"The vision takes a long-term and international perspective on optimizing the huge wind energy resources that the North Sea holds. We should be interested in more for the whole, regional synergies and how we can progressively and coordinated expand wind capacity and infrastructure in the North Sea instead of building new wind farms as if they were the last,"says Lars Barfoed. 

In addition to investigating perspectives in the central hub as a harbour mooring site, the consortium also works with the development of storage and conversion of electricity, including Power to Gas, as an activity to be able to unfold offshore and create added value for the collected wind turbine flow. 

The five partners in the consortium have committed themselves to spending time until mid 2019 to investigate the potential of the vision. This is done through concrete studies of technical, environmental and market perspectives. 

"If a wind energy hub in the North Sea is to go from vision to reality, it requires - regardless of the technical and economic potentials - massive political support from a wide range of participating countries. In addition, the North Sea has protected natural areas of vital importance to our ecosystem, and many stakeholders need to be involved to balance both climate and environmental considerations as well as cost-effective development of wind farms and infrastructure. It has today's presentation on the Clean Energy Ministerial hopefully helped to promote," concludes Lars Barfoed.

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