Without doubt, a key pillar of Europe’s energy transition is offshore wind (OW). A timely and affordable rollout of OW is crucial to reaching climate targets, achieving energy independence, and creating earning capacity in the region’s future economy. However, a vicious cycle fuels a rat race to ever-larger turbines, leading to ever-shorter product life cycles and uncertainty about future turbine sizes. The rat race increases cost of energy and hampers capacity rollout. Governments must now enforce a standard turbine size for a considerable period to allow the industry and its supply chain to break out of this cycle. Such a standard will create certainty for investments and industrialization, and support the affordable capacity boost we need.
"The OW industry must triple its capacity. Now is the time to lay the groundwork for a robust, future-proof supply chain, to ensure competitive cost of electricity and continued industrial activity in Europe"
To reach Europe’s energy transition targets, heads of state from countries around the North Sea, together with the European OW industry, came together in Ostend in 2023 and agreed on a very ambitious target to reach 120 GW capacity by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050. Industry committed to ramping-up capacity additions from 7 GW/year in 2023 to 20 GW/year by the end of the decade.
The ramp-up of OW capacity is necessary, but it is massive. Over a period of seven years, a total of 5,600 turbines, each the size of the Eiffel Tower, must be added to the grid. This means mobilizing 15 new installation vessels and recruiting 170,000 new employees. The only sustainable way to keep costs in check during this ramp-up is to develop a robust and fully industrialized supply chain. For Europe’s consumers, further cost reductions are a prerequisite to their support for the energy transition. For Europe’s energy-intensive industries, further cost reductions are simply a question of survival.
The OW industry has long been in a race towards bigger and better, especially when it comes to turbines. Up to now, size has mattered. The taller the turbines, the bigger the rotors, the more energy generated. And size is also how OEMs have been able to differentiate themselves and claim market share. But the cost–benefits of incremental steps to ever-larger turbines are diminishing. In fact, the race to larger turbines leads to ever-shorter product life cycles, which increases the levelized costs of energy (LCOE). This ‘rat race’ is fueled by a vicious cycle in the sector, see figure below.
To halt the increasingly fruitless rat race towards bigger turbines, European governments must now enforce an industry standard for turbine size and maintain it long enough so the industry can break out of the vicious cycle and build the robust, industrialized supply chain it needs. The standard should be set at the dimensions of the generation of 14-15 MW turbines that are currently on offer for commercial wind farms; this will ensure OEMs can further optimize their current models and prevent uncertainty about future turbine sizes for a determined period, e.g. until 2037. Standardization will lead to longer product life cycles, which will in turn lead to:
"To halt the increasingly fruitless rat race towards bigger turbines, we need to set an industry standard for turbine size, and to do so for long enough that the European OW industry can build the robust, industrialized supply chain it needs"
A fixed size will still leave ample room in the supply chain for differentiation and competition, especially when it comes to aspects like turbine performance, installation techniques, circularity gains, and ecological protections. In fact, the extensive cost reductions that a standard size will generate across the supply chain – combined with the industry’s proven capacity to work closely together on wind farm projects and longer-term innovations – will give Europe’s industry a considerable boost competitively, not just at home but also across the international OW industry.
Fixing a standard for turbine sizes at commercial wind farms in the coming years does not mean hitting the brakes on the development of larger and/or smarter turbines. Despite the diminishing returns of the current incremental steps, a much larger step – for example to 30 MW – may bring further LCOE reduction by reducing the number of turbines necessary to reach a certain capacity at a wind farm. Beside much larger turbines, many promising technological innovations can also lead to lower LCOE. As an example, novel approaches to connecting tower and support structure can make the installation process more efficient.
The industry must plan a clear pathway ahead for the move to such larger and/or smarter turbines. This roadmap will create predictability around the next step up and its timing. It will give the actors in the supply chain the assurance and time they need to plan for and invest in capacity extensions and their industrialization for the coming years – all while giving them ample time to plan for the next step up. Predictability around future turbines sizes is also essential for the development and introduction of technological innovations.
In offshore wind, size is no longer the thing that matters most. Actors in the supply chain must now work hard on further industrialization to achieve a timely and affordable roll out of wind turbines. Turbine standardization is a prerequisite for such industrialization. Only then will the European OW industry become truly future-proof.
Explore how turbine standardization is essential for affordable offshore wind energy rollout, driving Europe's energy transition and industrial growth.
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