Winds of change: How offshore wind is shaping energy politics in the UK, Germany and beyond

Maximilian Münch

Science and Technology in Society (MSc) 2022-2023

 

Recently, I explored the intricate interplay between offshore wind technology and its encompassing societal dynamics. Why are diffusion targets for offshore wind so very ambitious in both Germany and the UK? How has offshore wind as a technology managed to move to the very centre of European renewable energy policy debates in just over two decades? And how does technology diffusion at this scale shape wider European energy politics?

Offshore wind is omnipresent in current energy policy debates around Europe. The technology has seen tremendous growth in Europe and China in recent years. However, even more staggering are the exponential projections of growth – the UK is planning to increase its current capacity more than four-fold by 2030, while Germany has ambitions to increase offshore wind capacity by more than three times. This is an enormous challenge: it means capacity additions of around 39 GW in the UK and 22 GW in Germany in only 6 years (1 GW roughly equals one large UK gas-fired power plant).

 

Distinctive Traditions

Some thoughts about the questions noted above are offered in the blog below, starting with considering how distinctive energy histories and traditions in Germany and the UK have shaped the countries’ respective national policy paths.

 

UK

In the early 2000s, energy policy in the UK was refocusing as the awareness of climate change was rising. An emerging decarbonisation imperative led, in 2008, to the UK’s Climate Change Act –  widely seen as a gold standard for climate change legislation internationally. In 2019, the UK became the first major economy to set a legally binding net-zero goal for 2050. These statutory commitments imposed formal pressures on policy areas which could deliver sufficient emissions reductions – one of them being energy innovation policy.

It soon became clear that a rapid large-scale diffusion of offshore wind was a relatively cost-efficient way of achieving the decarbonisation of energy supply. This was because offshore wind was at a comparatively mature technology stage, so it was amenable to rapid cost reduction through supply chain competition and design upscaling. Other important factors were the UK’s favourable geographical properties for a large-scale diffusion of offshore wind, and the lesser spatial conflicts related to offshore physical infrastructure compared to onshore projects.

While energy policy in the UK is a centralized policy area, the leasing and consenting of seabed is a devolved matter. This results in diverging policies and processes for England, Scotland, and Wales. This is a curious contrast to Germany which, despite its Länder structure organizes its leasing and consenting of seabed on a federal level.

Germany

To a much greater extent than in the UK, German energy debates are informed by long-standing environmental grassroots movements. Originating from the 1970s, when the German Government wanted to rapidly scale-up nuclear energy, public backlash and mass demonstrations forced the government to cut back on its plans. This heightened ecological sensitivity remained part of the public discourse and is still today observable in a Green party that has been part of German Governments several times. Furthermore, community-based renewable energy solutions are very common across Germany. A formalised climate change law that would put top-down pressure on achieving an accelerated energy transition (akin to the UK Climate Change Act) was only passed by the German Bundestag in 2019. (It was later invalidated by the Constitutional Court for putting too much of the transition burden on generations yet to come).

Without a climate change law, German policy support for renewable energies came instead through a Renewable Energies Law (EEG) and by industrial strategies to scale up renewables. Part of this ambition was driven by a desire to support German renewables manufacturing industries, which at that point have been comparatively strong. Offshore wind technology was first installed in German waters in 2009, about 6 years later than in the UK. This delay was partly due to the comparatively difficult geographic conditions in the German North Sea, making it more costly to develop wind farms in these regions. Nonetheless, in Germany, too, offshore wind has now become a central element to the country’s ambitions to decarbonize its energy system.

Aligning Interests

By 2020, a heightened awareness and sense of urgency of climate change in both countries created pressures for governments and parliaments to act – with offshore wind technology offering a way to deliver on decarbonisation objectives, green industry strategy and minimising public opposition.  Technology diffusion was in a sense ‘propelled’ by these broader societal aims.

A similarly significant situation occurred again more recently in the realm of geopolitics. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the geopolitical landscape in Europe was reshuffled. Germany was particularly exposed to dependencies on Russian gas supplies. However, the policy objective of ensuring energy security gained relative importance all over Europe. Policy makers have turned towards renewable energies as they can be produced locally (although some components rely on international sourcing), are generally decentralised, and are powered by unlimited resources. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that renewable energy offers the potential to increase energy security and ultimately reshape interstate energy relations.

Faced with the fallout of the Ukraine war, North Sea bordering countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding, where renewable energy is explicitly seen as a tool to shape broader political challenges: “The sides consider the indispensable, enabling role that renewable energy plays […] to meet the net zero ambition and implement the Paris agreement. They further stress the role of renewable energy in rapidly reducing the dependence on Russian fossil fuels […].”

Technology has taken a central role in fulfilling climate policy and energy security objectives in both Germany and the UK. The underlying challenges and interests of both countries in diffusing offshore wind at rapid speed are nuanced, yet overall, have become highly aligned.

This is shown in an increased level of political and technical cooperation between different nations in the North Sea region. An Ostend declaration, signed earlier this year, proposes to develop the North Seas into a “European Green Power Plant”. Since then, a limited number of concrete projects have emerged, where nations work together to increase connectivity between national electricity grids and integrate offshore wind farms into multiple national grids – a sign of increasing energy cooperation on the European level.

Competition and Collaboration

While there are many indicators for greater European energy cooperation on a bilateral and multilateral level, European nations remain in competition with one another over capturing supply chains, investment, and green jobs. This could result in ‘renewables nationalism’, where European nations limit cooperation. Alternatively, it may also be the case that further actors, such as China, with its highly subsidised renewables components, or the US, with its Inflation Reduction Act, are framed as the ‘true competitors’, necessitating increased European cooperation.

Ultimately, offshore wind technology offers secure, affordable, and low-emission energy at a time when these properties are in high demand. Technology-specific policy support will therefore likely continue throughout the medium-term future and facilitate a large-scale technology diffusion. The scale of this challenge presents an opportunity for new, ambitious European cooperation. In fact, with the current ‘winds of change’ there is a clear opportunity to redefine European energy relations – particularly those between the EU and UK.