New Danish Energy Agreement: good deal and clear visibility for wind industry

Last Friday the Danish government and parliament reached an agreement on a new long-term energy policy that will run to 2030.

WindEurope and Eurelectric held a joint workshop in Sofia last week looking at how to unlock the vast potential of wind energy in South East Europe.

EU negotiators struck a deal last week that sets out how Member States will collectively meet the EU-wide target of 32% renewable energy by 2030.

On 13 June, a plenary session of the Lithuanian Parliament officially adopted an ambitious National Energy Strategy which significantly steps up the country’s ambitions on renewables.

Tuesday, 12 June marked the opening of the International Conference on Marine Energy in Normandy. Over three days, this biennial global marine energy event will focus on the industrial development of ocean energy.

On 11 June, WindEurope CEO called on the German Government to side with other progressive European governments – Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Lithuania – on renewables and secure a positive outcome on the 2030 renewable energy target.

On 6 June, WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson took part in a high-level panel discussion on the potential benefits of meshed offshore grids in Europe. The panel discussion took place at the mid-term project conference organised by the Horizon 2020 project PROMOTioN (PROgress on Meshed HVDC Offsfhore Transmission Networks).

WindEurope pledges support for Polish transition from coal

On 15 May WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson participated in a panel discussion on ‘Coal regions in transition’ at the European Economic Congress in Katowice.

Germany has announced the results of its latest offshore wind auction on Friday. Six projects won. They’ve a total capacity between them of 1.6 GW and are split evenly between the North Sea and Baltic Sea.

On Monday 18 April WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson participated in a lively discussion at the German parliament on the future of renewables in Europe.

Industry maturity and competition for green assets bring €51.2bn of wind energy investments in 2017

Europe invested a total of €51.2bn in wind energy in 2017. The development of new farms accounted for €22.3bn of this.

Ambitious 8 GW of offshore wind planned that will put Poland back on wind energy map

State-owned Polish Transmission System Operator, PSE, has said that as much as 8 GW of offshore wind capacity could be installed in Poland.

The Dutch Government has awarded Vattenfall in a tender to develop the twin Hollandse Kust Zuid offshore wind farms. The two 350 MW wind farms, to be built by 2022, will be the world’s first to be built without public subsidy.

The European Commission today published plans to help finance sustainable growth. These could help re-direct capital from conventional power plants to wind energy.

Costs have fallen in the latest French onshore wind tender, according to the results released by the French Government.

The European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research & Energy (ITRE) has voted to modernise Europe’s electricity markets yesterday. The ITRE Committee gave its green light to the recast Electricity Directive & Regulation, two of the main files in the Clean Energy Package.

The integration of increasing shares of renewable energy into electricity grids is getting easier and cheaper. Smart grids, demand response, flexible wind turbines and storage are helping to do this. But we need to upgrade and expand the grid to secure the significant cost savings that an interconnected power market could offer.

Wind industry breaks records in Europe but faces uncertain outlook

Europe added a record 15.7 GW of new wind energy capacity in 2017, according to WindEurope’s annual onshore and offshore wind statistics released today.

2017 was a record year for offshore wind in Europe according to statistics released today by WindEurope. Europe installed 3.1 GW of new offshore wind, taking total capacity to 15.8 GW, an increase of 25% in just one year.

On 24 January WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson joined representatives of the Industry4Europe group to meet Elzbieta Bienkowska, European Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.

European Parliament gives strong backing for future of renewables

Members of the European Parliament gave a resounding vote in favour of renewables in Europe yesterday.

European Parliament set for crucial vote on future of European renewables

Members of the European Parliament will vote on Wednesday 17 January on Europe’s policy ambition on renewable energy up to 2030.

On 9 January, EU Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete hosted the first meeting of the Clean Energy Industrial Forum dedicated to renewables. A group of 25 industry Executives representing a broad range of renewable energy technologies was convened by the Commission to outline priorities for enhancing Europe’s competitiveness in renewables, with an emphasis on Research and Innovation and trade policy.

Yesterday’s Energy Council agreed general approaches on four key files of the EU Clean Energy Package. These will serve as the basis for negotiations with the European Parliament in 2018. As far as the wind industry is concerned, there was progress on some key issues but Ministers fell short on others.

By 2030 only 6% of Europe’s wind energy capacity will be unexposed to market risks through support schemes, down from 75% today. This means that the transition to auctions allocating renewable energy support comes with more exposure to price risk.

WindEurope today congratulated the Industry Committee of the European Parliament for backing a binding target of at least 35% renewable energy for 2030 and more stringent renewable energy laws.

Europe's €36bn industrial success story: but for how long?

The European wind industry contributed €36bn to the EU’s GDP in 2016, supports 263,000 jobs and generated €8bn of exports outside of Europe.

InnoEnergy and WindEurope to hold first joint hackathon, ‘Hack the Wind’

€20,000 competition to solve industry challenges with innovations that could lead to new start-ups

Costs come down again in 1 GW German onshore wind auction

The results are in from the latest German onshore auction and costs have fallen again. The average support price is €38/MWh. The lowest bid was €22/MWh.

Wind energy is set to become the leading source of electricity in the EU soon after 2030. This is according to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), ‘World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2017’, released today.